tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66584329963742519072024-03-25T15:01:03.211+00:00In the Space of ReasonsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger680125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-4052474838430038872024-03-25T15:00:00.002+00:002024-03-25T15:00:12.287+00:00A quick browse of Steve Peters: The Chimp Paradox<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQcyAxsuQdUQq1Lq5qO9Caxbp1RlONmrBJgfZzFfq-z1BnTH7UwBC5l1ajdWXo6IL4hPtmG84x0kMFF9YPrq9qfiR-peKauAq4HpGZUg5M8gU2IFqHILw7G68mmjRuztHoq5BmCeexgo2bEcHimqJWDtgu63C5Y5bV6fsf-OQYXXq0JvbLyJpjYq4pSO3q/s1000/Peters%20Chimp%20Paradox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="625" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQcyAxsuQdUQq1Lq5qO9Caxbp1RlONmrBJgfZzFfq-z1BnTH7UwBC5l1ajdWXo6IL4hPtmG84x0kMFF9YPrq9qfiR-peKauAq4HpGZUg5M8gU2IFqHILw7G68mmjRuztHoq5BmCeexgo2bEcHimqJWDtgu63C5Y5bV6fsf-OQYXXq0JvbLyJpjYq4pSO3q/w125-h200/Peters%20Chimp%20Paradox.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>Richard<br /><br />I’ve had an enjoyable hour looking at <i>The Chimp Paradox</i>. I hadn’t realised when you said his name that he is that Steve Peters.<br /><br />Here are my quick thoughts.<br /><br />My first question opening the book was why is there a ‘paradox’ and what was it? I think of a paradox as a conceptually baffling phenomenon. Perhaps some issue where we are drawn to two answers, for very strong reasons, but which cannot both be true. I’m not sure that there is any paradox in the book. And I’m not sure he uses the word ‘paradox’ more than twice (I’ve searched), which is odd. I think what he means is that there are two elements in human psychology that pull in different ways. That’s not quite as dramatic a notion. I think that anyone who balances, say, wanting a donut now and wanting to have that same donut later already knows that choice is a balancing of competing wishes. You couldn’t sell a book on that revelation.<br /><br />There is then the ‘science bit’, as Jennifer Aniston put it in her shampoo adverts. The brain has divisions and brain imaging suggests some broad correlations between mental activity and localised brain activity, as measured by blood flow. Also there are deficit studies and Peters cites the celebrated Phileas Gage case. I think it fair to say that standard neurology is that the brain isn’t homogenous and there’s quite a bit of localisation. (Gage himself recovered from impulsivity despite his brain damage a couple of years after his accident, so it’s not hard and fast. But that doesn’t undermine the basic claim of localisation.)<br /><br />Labelling the limbic system the ‘chimp brain’ suggests an evolutionary story. You and I mentioned the reptilian brain. But it’s interesting that in this book, Peters does not actually use the word ‘evolution’ once. The other irritating thing here is that he uses the word ‘brain’ to refer to parts of the human brain. He even calls part of the human brain the ‘human brain’. No it isn’t! It’s part of it. We could cash this out by saying that in evolutionary theory, this bit only emerged with the development of a characteristically human organism but I’d like some indication of that story. (Fossil records make this tricky, of course, but I’d cut him slack if he made the right gestures.)<br /><br />This is further illustrated by his odd habit of saying that we the reader, the humans, comprise only part of our minds. The chimp thinks one thing; we another. This is odd because ‘we’ are the sum total of all of this. (Freud has better terminology for this.)<br /><br />I bet others have said this, but it all bears more than a passing similarity to the distinction between id, ego and superego in Freud. Peter’s we/‘human’ flips between ego and super-ego depending on how puritanical Peters is being.<br /><br />My professional scepticism enters at this point to ask: to what extent will the body of the book reflect any of these possible neurological or evolutionary theories? I’d say: not at all. For example: he credits the inner monkey with asking what if… questions. That’s not credible. Fight-flight isn’t a hypothetical: it’s an insurance policy. Hypotheticals are tricky things to grasp and thus surely belong to the human. But it serves his purposes to suggests that this is part of the chimp even if that falsifies the evolutionary story.<br /><br />All the rest is Peter’s moral world-view. He’s rather a strict Victorian parent. So we must judge the book by whether it is a helpful self-help fairy tale. (That’s roughly how I’d assess Freud too and I like Freud so I’m not being mean.) It wouldn’t help me.<br /><br />I don’t like his simple split between logic and emotion. I don’t think we can draw that line (except in a way which makes logic merely an abstract calculus taught in philosophy classes). If logic is the structure of reasoning, it cannot be separated from emotional contents. <br /><br />I note that he thinks that future based happiness is part of the human mind. So, some emotion is allowed into the supposedly strictly logical human as long as, like a Victorian parent, we agree to defer it to later (heaven?). Again, that fits his coaching story but isn’t very convincing.<br /><br />His attitude to emotional processing is also very C19. It seems as though he concedes: Well it has to go on so we better let our inner chimp grieve the death of our beloved partner, say. But we humans just let that happen in the next room of our minds. We’re not grieving! We, humans, are weirdly unemotional – except when we’re allowed to be in the future. This is terrible psychotherapy! (That’s not a professional judgement, I concede.)<br /><br />His picture of conflicts of wishes seems naïve, too. If we have a wish but wish we didn’t have it, then he seems to think that the chimp is ‘in charge’ in so far as we have the ground level wish in the first place though I assume in some further sense we are in charge because we get to say no (or at least wish we didn’t have that wish). It’s not at all clear to me that all countermanding of ground level wishes is an expression of a better self. My inner teenager often stifles my adult good intentions by suggesting that I must have an ulterior motive for a good act. The devil on my shoulder isn’t always merely a chimp-like, Freudian-Id-like desire. It may be a deep insecurity.<br /><br />This is a pity because I do think that there can be interesting crossovers between neurology, evolutionary theory and psychology. For example the dopamine theory of alcoholism is really interesting. It also makes some of Peter’s questions seem over simple. He keeps asking what we want. But there may be different species of wanting. Knowing that is helpful, it seems to me. See eg: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55221825">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-55221825</a><br /><br />Anyway, I’ve had a pleasurable hour looking at it, even if it isn’t for me.<br /><br />T<br /><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-68339422893254304492023-11-10T09:17:00.010+00:002023-11-10T14:17:59.104+00:00Notes mainly on pp92-4 of Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self<b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWrcM4lwpIVbAC7hyphenhyphenJmeZBKxeZAIJacbCEBjAn9dIuD1E5P6s3hixbSYySiY1GMiDbR-yfttV8yBzaTcUbIJNQDR-IIowaBkBEfDlJwmuNVK80s13lxC2S7TMlmbXi6rh2rSYDMbRmX5MCjQa_Vl3M9z2o1w8Sf1fsJw7xWRhiSOgdOY2a-XkRDD5Xort/s500/Sources%20of%20the%20self.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="338" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdWrcM4lwpIVbAC7hyphenhyphenJmeZBKxeZAIJacbCEBjAn9dIuD1E5P6s3hixbSYySiY1GMiDbR-yfttV8yBzaTcUbIJNQDR-IIowaBkBEfDlJwmuNVK80s13lxC2S7TMlmbXi6rh2rSYDMbRmX5MCjQa_Vl3M9z2o1w8Sf1fsJw7xWRhiSOgdOY2a-XkRDD5Xort/w135-h200/Sources%20of%20the%20self.jpg" width="135" /></a></div></b>I have been trying to understand part of the framework of Charles Taylor’s (1989) <i>Sources of the Self</i> which I first read 20 years ago and filed away for my retirement. Quite how it is possible for a philosopher, in their study, to write about modernity as such is still beyond me but I have more time now to try to catch up.In fact, I’m stuck a bit before the book gets to that bit.<div><br /></div><div><b>Exegesis</b> <br /><br />Taylor begins by setting out the stalking horse: a broad conception of morality, or a broader category than the category of morality as usually understood, to capture ‘what makes life worth living’.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">I want to consider a gamut of views a bit broader than what is normally described as the ‘moral’. In addition to our notions and reactions on such issues as justice and the respect of other people’s life, well-being, and dignity, I want also to look at our sense of what underlies our own dignity, or questions about what makes our lives meaningful or fulfilling. These might be classed as moral questions on some broad definition, but some are too concerned with the self-regarding, or too much a matter of our ideals, to be classed as moral issues in most people’s lexicon. They concern, rather, what makes life worth living. </blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">What they have in common with moral issues, and what deserves the vague term ‘spiritual’, is that they all involve what I have called elsewhere ‘<u>strong evaluation</u>’, that is, they involve discriminations of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or lower, which are not rendered valid by our own desires, inclinations, or choices, but rather stand independent of these and offer standards by which they can be judged. So while it may not be judged a moral lapse that I am living a life that is not really worthwhile or fulfilling, to describe me in these terms is nevertheless to condemn me in the name of a standard, independent of my own tastes and desires, which I ought to acknowledge.
Perhaps the most urgent and powerful cluster of demands that we recognize as moral concern the respect for the life, integrity, and well-being, even flourishing, of others. These are the ones we infringe when we kill or maim others, steal their property, strike fear into them and rob them of peace, or even refrain from helping them when they are in distress. Virtually everyone feels these demands, and they have been and are acknowledged in all human societies. [SS 4 underline added]</blockquote><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">‘Morality’, of course, can be and often is defined purely in terms of respect for others. The category of the moral is thought to encompass just our obligations to other people. But if we adopt this definition, then we have to allow that there are other questions beyond the moral which are of central concern to us, and which bring <u>strong evaluation</u> into play. There are questions about how I am going to live my life which touch on the issue of what kind of life is worth living, or what kind of life would fulfill the promise implicit in my particular talents, or the demands incumbent on someone with my endowment, or of what constitutes a rich, meaningful life-as against one concerned with secondary matters or trivia. These are issues of <u>strong evaluation</u>, because the people who ask these questions have no doubt that one can, following one’s immediate wishes and desires, take a wrong turn and hence fail to lead a full life. To understand our moral world we have to see not only what ideas and pictures underlie our sense of respect for others but also those which underpin our notions of a full life. And as we shall see, these are not two quite separate orders of ideas. [14 underline added]</blockquote><br />Both these passages connect the broader than normal conception of morality to a proprietary notion of ‘strong evaluation’. Since this features only 23 times in <i>Sources</i>, it is necessary to follow a footnote back to another paper: ‘What Is Human Agency?’ in his <i>Human Agency and Language</i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). He adds in the footnote: ‘A good test for whether an evaluation is ‘strong’ in my sense is whether it can be the basis for attitudes of admiration and contempt’. <br /><br />The broad story of ‘What Is Human Agency?’ is a Frankfurtian story of human agency or autonomy which adds to Frankfurt’s proceduralist account of a hierarchy of higher and lower level attitudes, including attitudes about attitudes. Taylor agrees with Frankfurt that:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">what is distinctively human is the power to evaluate our desires, to regard some as desirable and others are undesirable. This is why ‘no animal other than man… appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires’. I agree with Frankfurt that this capacity to evaluate desires is bound up with our power of self-evaluation, which in turn is an essential feature of the mode of agency we recognize as human. But I believe we can come closer to defining what is involved in this mode of agency if we make a further distinction, between two broad kinds of evaluation of desire… In the first case, which we may call weak evaluation, we are concerned with outcomes; in the second, strong evaluation, with the quality of our motivation. [HA 15-16]</blockquote><br />Not just any evaluation of ground level desires is sufficient for proper human agency. It requires strong evaluation.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">(1 ) In weak evaluation, for something to be judged good it is sufficient that it be desired, whereas in strong evaluation there is also a use of ‘good’ or some other evaluative term for which being desired is not sufficient ; indeed some desires or desired consummations can be judged as bad, base, ignoble, trivial, superficial, unworthy, and so on .
It follows from this that (2) when in weak evaluation one desired alternative is set aside, it is only on grounds of its contingent incompatibility with a more desired alternative. I go to lunch later, although hungry now, because then I shall be able to lunch and swim . But I should be happy to have the best of both worlds: if the pool were open now, I could assuage my immediate hunger as well as enjoying a swim at lunchtime.
But with strong evaluation this is not necessarily the case. Some desired consummation may be eschewed not because it is incompatible with another, or if because of incompatibility this will not be contingent. Thus I refrain from committing some cowardly act, although very tempted to do so, but this is not because this act at this moment would make any other desired act impossible, as lunching now would make swimming impossible, but rather because it is base. [HA: 18]</blockquote><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">I should also like to add, but with perhaps less certainty of universal agreement, that the capacity for strong evaluation in particular is essential to our notion of the human subject. [HA: 28]</blockquote><br />The added richness of this account – which makes it logically less plausible than Frankfurt’s as a necessary condition on human agency or subjectivity – is what enables strong evaluation to connect into Taylor’s broader picture of morality. (Simply having any desires about any other desires would not. These might be more trivially weak.)<br /><br />Jumping briefly ahead, this connection is reiterated on p122 of Sources in a passage that connects moral sources of the self, Plato’s notion of the Good (others will be available!) and strong evaluation.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">The vision of the good is at the very centre of Plato’s doctrine of moral resources. The good of the whole, whose order manifests the Idea of the Good, is the final good, the one which englobes all partial goods. It not only includes them but confers a higher dignity on them; since the Good is what commands our categorical love and allegiance. It is the ultimate source of <u>strong evaluation</u>, something which stands on its own as worthy of being desired and sought, not just desirable given our existing goals and appetites [ie. weak evaluation]. It provides the standard of the desirable beyond the variation of de facto desire. In the light of the Good, we can see that our good, the proper order in our souls, has this categoric worth, which it enjoys as a proper part of the whole order. [SS: 122 underline added]</blockquote><br />Returning then to the earlier outline of the project of Sources of the Self on p92. A key aim of the work is to set out the moral sources of concepts (ancient, Christian and modern) of the self. Why?<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Why try to say what the underlying sense of the good consists in? Why make it articulate in descriptive language? Why try to find formulations for it which can figure in moral thinking?
There is, of course, a one-line Socratic answer to this. It emerges from a particular ethical view, or range of views, which sees reason, in the sense of the logos, of linguistic articulacy, as part of the telos of human beings. We aren’t full beings in this perspective until we can say what moves us, what our lives are built around.
I confess that I share some version of this conception. [SS: 92]</blockquote><br />So one reason for the project is the intrinsic value of leading an examined life. Taylor shares sympathy with the idea that making underlying conceptions of the good explicit is a good thing itself. But there is also an instrumental reason. (The above quotation continues:)<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">But without prejudice to this more general issue of the value of the unexamined life as such, what I want to examine now is the more particular importance of articulacy for our sense of the good. In this I may also be following a Socratic idea. The central notion here is that articulation can <i>bring us closer to the good as a moral source, can give it power</i>. (italics added)</blockquote><br />In a way yet to be explained, making the deeper historically conditioned moral sources of self-identity explicit can empower conceptions of the good (this may be a matter of moral motivation, see below). This is necessary in the face of a different modern approach to moral philosophy such as Kantian deontology or utilitarianism which promotes single codifications of right action (‘thus cramming the tremendous variety of moral considerations into a Procrustes bed’).<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">The understanding of the good as a moral source has also been deeply suppressed in the mainstream of modern moral consciousness, although it was perfectly familiar to the ancients. I have been speaking of the good in these pages, or sometimes of strong good, meaning whatever is picked out as incomparably higher in a qualitative distinction. It can be some action, or motive, or style of life, which is seen as qualitatively superior. ‘Good’ is used here in a highly general sense, designating anything considered valuable, worthy, admirable, of whatever kind or category.</blockquote><br />This sense of ‘good’ appears to be that of strong evaluation, again. But, Taylor suggests, there is a also fuller, or perhaps deeper, sense of good or the Good.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">But in some of these distinctions, there is something which seems to deserve the attribution in a fuller sense. To take Plato’s theory as an example: the distinction between higher and lower actions, motivations, ways of living turns on the hegemony of reason or desire. But the hegemony of reason is understood substantively. To be rational is to have a vision of rational order, and to love this order. So the difference of action or motivation has to be explained by reference to a cosmic reality, the order of things. <i>This is good in a fuller sense: the key to this order is the Idea of the Good itself. Their relation to this is what <u>makes </u>certain of our actions or aspirations good; it is what <u>constitutes</u> the goodness of these actions or motives</i>. Let us call this kind of reality a ‘constitutive good’. (italics and underline added)</blockquote><br />This deeper notion of the Good seems to have two roles of which this is the first. It is what makes shallower goods – though still matters for strong evaluation – good. It constitutes their goodness. Hence it is a ‘constitutive good’. But it also plays a second role.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">We can then say that for Plato the constitutive good is the order of being, or perhaps the principle of that order, the Good. But we can see right away that <i>this plays another role in addition to constituting or defining what good action is. The Good is also that the love of which moves us to good action.</i> The constitutive good is a moral source, in the sense I want to use this term here: that is, it is a something the love of which empowers us to do and be good. (italics added)</blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /></blockquote>The Good is a ‘moral source’ in that it explains moral motivation or will towards ‘life goods’.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">But spelling this out puts the discussion of the previous sections in a new light. In the argument of the last chapters, I have been concentrating on qualitative distinctions [ie strong evaluation] between actions, or feelings, or modes of life. The goods which these define are facets or components of a good life. Let us call these ‘life goods’. But now we see, in Plato’s case, that the life goods <i>refer </i>us to some feature of the way things are, in virtue of which these life goods are goods. This feature constitutes them as goods, and that is why I call them constitutive. (italics added)</blockquote><br />There is a notion of reference in play. Life goods refer a subject to a deeper constitutive good in perhaps the way that a cheque refers to the bank balance on which it may later call. Constitutive goods are thus involved explicitly by Taylor, and implicitly by subjects according to Taylor, for two reasons: to explain 1) what really constitutes the goodness of life goods and 2) what motivates the subject to pursue those life goods.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">The constitutive good does more than just define the content of the moral theory. Love of it is what <i>empowers </i>us to be good… (italics added)</blockquote><br />Such a picture of goods and the broader picture of morality it helps fill out is thus a richer notion than most moral theory (Kantian deontology or utilitarianism) which ignores, but according to Taylor merely effaces, the kind of discriminations made by moral subjects (ie human subjects) in strong evaluations (see <i>Sources </i>chapter 3). Thus, such theories are bound to ignore constitutive goods which are even less obviously in play because they ‘stand behind’ them.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">This obviously takes us far beyond the purview of the morals of obligatory action. These theories balk even at acknowledging life goods; they obviously have no place at all for a constitutive good which might <i>stand behind them</i>. I argued at the end of the previous chapter that the refusal of these theories to accept qualitative distinctions, while understandable, was based on a confusion; that they themselves were motivated by goods of this kind. In other words, I argued that they were grounded on an unadmitted adherence to certain life goods, such as freedom, altruism, universal justice. And indeed, if the argument of the previous chapters is anywhere near right, it is hard to see how one could have a moral theory at all or, indeed, be a self, without some such adherence.
Can an analogous point be made about constitutive goods? Do they too form part of the unacknowledged baggage of modern, or indeed of all, moral theories? Or is this Platonic notion of a good as the object of empowering love something which belongs to the remote past? (italics added)</blockquote><br />Given that one topic of Sources is modernity, it had better not be the case that if there is broader moral thinking – strong evaluation – in the modern era that only Platonic thinking allows for constitutive goods. If this were true it would undermine Taylor’s claim that constitutive goods are necessary to constitute the good quality of life goods and motivate subjects to pursue them.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">It is obvious that Platonism is not alone in conceiving a constitutive good as source in this way. Christian and Jewish theism do as well. It was natural for Christian Platonists like Augustine to see God as occupying the place of Plato’s Idea of the Good. The image of the sun serves for both, with of course the major difference that the love which empowers here is not just ours for God, but also his (agape) for us. But what happens when, as in modem humanist views, we no longer have anything like a constitutive good external to man? What can we say when the notion of the higher is a form of human life which consists precisely in facing a disenchanted universe with courage and lucidity?
It seems to me that one can still speak of a moral source here. There is a constitutive reality, namely, humans as beings capable of this courageous disengagement. <u>And our sense of admiration and awe for these capacities is what empowers us to live up to them.</u> [all above quotations: 92-4, underline added] </blockquote><br />Returning to Plato:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">In the light of the Good, we can see that our good, the proper order in our souls, has this categoric worth, which it enjoys as a proper part of the whole order. [122]</blockquote><br /><b>Problems</b>?<br /><br />The two roles of constitutive goods have two related problems. (NB ‘constitutive good’ is only used 44 times in <i>Sources </i>and nowhere is it really explained, nor the relation of constitution, itself used only 10 times and never for this purpose.)<br /><br /><i>Constitution:</i><br /><br />There is no obvious knock-down argument that one sort of good must be constituted as good, as having the value of goodness, by something deeper, ‘standing behind it’, in Taylor’s phrase. But it is undermotivated. Given that life goods are already in play, what is the argument for introducing a distinct form of good that ‘stands behind’ them?<br /><br />Note, for example, that strong evaluation already carries a weight of justificatory evaluation. An act is good in virtue not just of it being liked by a subject but of some further aspect of it which goes deeper than its conflict with other subjective preferences (eating lunch versus going for a swim). The question ‘what is it about this action or aim that makes it good?’ already has some answer even to be in the space of strong evaluation in the first place and thus a candidate for a life good. All such explanations will terminate somewhere (like Wittgenstein’s spade being turned) but the fact that explanations do not endlessly continue does not undermine the idea of strong evaluation (or any justificatory reasons). The explanation of the good of a life good via a constitutive good would not escape the same challenge were it a problem.<br /><br />Some <i>life </i>goods might support other <i>life </i>goods in strong evaluation. Others, in contexts, may be incompatible (cf prima facie moral reasons) without that meaning that a putative good is not a good at all, ceteris paribus. So what marks out the realm of <i>constitutive </i>values as justificatory but not themselves life goods (but standing behind them)? Why is there any need of them if their purpose is to answer constitutive/justificatory questions (of the sort: what makes this good, or why is this good?) and that is already provided by life goods being subject to strong evaluation?<br /><br />If the job-description is not justificatory but more darkly metaphysical – a kind of brute metaphysical supervenience of visible life goods on invisible constitutive goods – why call the latter goods? (Perhaps all life goods are connected to / constituted by patterns of atoms but atoms, as such, are not goods).<br /><br /><i>Moral motivation</i>:<br /><br />One answer to the last question might be moral motivation. If the explanation for why a subject is motivated to pursue, because they value, life goods is that they already value constitutive goods, perhaps the latter have to be good-like. But why is there any explanation needed here? If a life good is a good then its recognition as good carries with it – ceteris paribus and prima facie – its own direct explanation of motivation. To be a subject’s good is to be something to which the subject is drawn. Isn’t that what ‘a good’ means?<br /><br />But if Taylor severs that internal relation between a good and motivation, by what magic do constitutive goods regain it. Consider the (modern) example of such an explanation of motivation above: ‘There is a constitutive reality, namely, humans as beings capable of this courageous disengagement. And our sense of admiration and awe for these capacities is what empowers us to live up to them’. Why should either admiration or awe motivate subjects if their life goods are incapable of that? Once goods are construed as motivationally inert, admiration and awe look equally inert. Is it obvious that one should seek out awe? Why not avoid it as an unsettling experience? One might say and ask: ‘yes I admire and am in awe of this aspect of my own or some other’s character, but what about that brute fact should ipso facto motivate me?’ If awe, <i>as a matter of fact</i>, is sufficient to motivate a particular subject, why not becoming an accountant, or becoming wealthy (by becoming an accountant), or being able to support one’s family (by becoming wealthy by becoming an accountant)? (I think that MacIntrye is more to be trusted here because he gets to what is right about all this without weird metaphysics.)<br /><br />Once it is allowed that a good needs connecting to an action by something else – a principle say – what connects the latter to an action? (Cf Wittgenstein regress of interpretations eg of signposts.)<br /><br /><b>A different book?</b><br /><br />There could be a book called <i>Sources of the Self</i> which connected conceptions of moral subjecthood and agency across the ages to broader world pictures. It would chart how human cultures move from one episteme to another. It would be a history of metaphysics (of the moral subject/agent and of the moral realm). But it would not itself be a work of metaphysics.<br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-63878321593505281702023-06-21T09:48:00.003+01:002023-06-22T10:00:33.575+01:00The consolations of philosophy of psychiatry: a sort of autoethnography<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMgZftTnZ5sTi5xaOCUvADGwJLO_lRFRrPcAmaIdFUSFlDK3uHzygVGDgbJY3Wc7T9F_O47JBMd7y_mYYIO33-CAddhjhJ9-acU6WPA-ZuO73Qlz3jmpREKGGfz7KOdF4utJBFYTlDHfstxM0uIMCbGDwL_7Qf1QugZ_sbo7MQ_MR_a62C07ODGJKTflYB/s293/413obM5L9wL._SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_ML2_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="196" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMgZftTnZ5sTi5xaOCUvADGwJLO_lRFRrPcAmaIdFUSFlDK3uHzygVGDgbJY3Wc7T9F_O47JBMd7y_mYYIO33-CAddhjhJ9-acU6WPA-ZuO73Qlz3jmpREKGGfz7KOdF4utJBFYTlDHfstxM0uIMCbGDwL_7Qf1QugZ_sbo7MQ_MR_a62C07ODGJKTflYB/w134-h200/413obM5L9wL._SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_ML2_.jpg" width="134" /></a></div>The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it is to offer a kind of autoethnography of a previously disinterested philosopher of psychiatry experiencing a common mental illness – Generalised Anxiety Disorder - and thus turning to philosophy for some sort of self-understanding. Second to assess how well Richard Moran’s account of self-knowledge in Authority and Estrangement illustrates my experience of anxiety (Moran 2007). The conclusion is that if offers a helpful third person account of the mismatch between avowal and reported belief that was the main focus of my symptoms but much less by way of first person understanding.<br /><br /><b>My experience</b><br /><br />My background is as an academic philosopher who began to take an interest in the philosophy of psychiatry in 1994. My main academic interest, stemming from a PhD on Wittgenstein, was in the irreducibility of meaning to the ‘realm of [natural scientific] law’, in Sellars’ phrase (Sellars 1997). It seemed plausible to me that the irreducibility of the space of reasons to the realm of law might have interesting consequences for psychiatry. But mine was a purely disinterested academic interest. This is perhaps the usual approach to what is in part a professionalised academic subject with its formal rules for publication and dissemination of research. Furthermore, since 1994, the philosophy of psychiatry has become an increasingly accepted, if still very small, academic subdiscipline of philosophy. It has entered a period of Kuhnian ‘normal science’ with an increasingly agreed syllabus of disciplinary problems with a number broad familiar approaches (Kuhn 1962/96**). For example, delusions are a central focus and there are competing approaches which, nevertheless agree on many basic ground-rules for the debate. As in other philosophical subdisciplines, there is no academic expectation that experts in the field have any more direct experiential connection to the phenomena of which it is the philosophical study.<br /><br />It has only been in the last half decade that I have experienced things in a more personal way, following what I would term, though psychiatry would not, a ‘nervous breakdown’, leading to a common diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Despite that name, my own anxiety focused narrowly on my employment, my to-do list and my email inbox. The main symptoms comprised sudden acute anxiety following a prompting thought about the day’s work schedule leading to distress, and initially retching and later vomiting. Simultaneously undergoing weekly psychotherapy, I was able over several months to notice and reflect on my thoughts while in extremis.<br /><br />Centrally, as I experienced somatised anxiety, I was also able to acknowledge that there were no rational grounds for such severe anxiety. I had received assurance that my academic post was safe, that I was respected by colleagues, that no failure to write a committee report or author a new departmental policy would be treated severely. There was, in other words, nothing to fear. And yet, even as I reported that thought, my distress remained. In fact, the more I avowed that I really knew that there was nothing to fear, the more extreme my somatisation became, retching becoming sudden violent vomiting.<br /><br />In reporting this back to my therapist, my apparently sincere assertion that there was nothing to fear began to seem less secure. Surely, I could not really believe that there was nothing to fear, given my behavioural responses? These responses were not merely expressed in involuntary bodily responses but also in motivated avoidance behaviours (of my computer, of trips to my university etc.). In short, it seemed both<br /><br />That there was obviously nothing to fear. Thus, that I believed – that I knew - that there was nothing to fear. But also:<br /><br />It seemed that I did not really believe that there was nothing to fear and my fear was dramatically behaviourally expressed.<br /><br />Given my 25 years work in the philosophy of psychiatry, it assumed that there might be some practical consolation from the discipline for my own experience. Such consolation might, as a minimum, might be:<br /><br />The consolation of philosophy: the provision of first person understanding of mental illness through philosophical analysis.<br /><br />This is a merely a hypothesis. The rest of this paper will explore how well it fares in my experience and quotidian experiences like mine. What insight can philosophy offer to the conflicting self ascriptions both that ‘I believe that there is nothing to fear’ and ‘I do not believe that there is nothing to fear’ both as an expression of an anxiety disorder?<br /><br /><b>Avowal vs. report</b><br /><br />In seeking self-understanding, I turned to Richard Moran’s Authority and Estrangement which I had antecedently thought a fine book. It sets out an influential recent approach to self-knowledge which replaces the idea of privileged inner and quasi-observational standing with the claim that self-knowledge paradigmatically stems from practical reasoning. <br /><br />In seeking to explain and vindicate avowal as a privileged form of knowledge of oneself, I… relat[e] the capacity for “immediate” or “introspective” awareness of one’s attitudes with the capacity of the person to make up his mind. (Moran 2001 134)<br /><br />Moran cites, among others, Gareth Evans:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">[I]n making a self-ascription of belief, one’s eyes are, so to speak, or occasionally literally, directed outward — upon the world. If someone asks me “Do you think there is going to be a third world war?,” I must attend, in answering him, to precisely the same outward phenomena as I would attend to if I were answering the question “Will there be a third world war?” (Evans 1982: 225)</blockquote><br />This expresses the view that self-knowledge of what one believes is based, centrally and usually, not on an inward turn but rather on looking ‘outwards’ (metaphorically or literally) to determine what one ought to believe. Moran refers to this as ‘transparency’, a notion he borrows from Roy Edgley:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">[M]y own present thinking, in contrast to the thinking of others, is transparent in the sense that I cannot distinguish the question “Do I think that P?” from a question in which there is no essential reference to myself or my belief, namely “Is it the case that P?” This does not of course mean that the correct answers to these two questions must be the same; only I cannot distinguish them, for in giving my answer to the question “Do I think that P?” I also give my answer, more or less tentative, to the question “Is it the case that P?” (Edgley 1969: 90)</blockquote><br />Moran stresses that by ‘transparency’ he does not mean that states of belief reduce to states of the world nor that agents are unaware of the difference between something being the case and them thinking it to be so. But rather:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">[A] first-person present-tense question about one’s belief is answered by reference to (or consideration of) the same reasons that would justify an answer to the corresponding question about the world. (Moran 2001: 61)</blockquote><br />Transparency is manifested in the role of avowal.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">An avowal of one’s belief… is not made on any psychologically explanatory basis, and is rather the expression of one’s own present commitment to the truth of the proposition in question. (ibid: 89)</blockquote><br />Avowal expresses a normative judgement of what one ought to think. It is an expression of practical knowledge sharing commonalities with Elizabeth Anscombe’s account of self-knowledge of actions of which she says: “I do what happens” (Anscombe 2000: 52). For actions, what one does is a worldly happening. And so there is the promise, at least, of an account of the kind of authority an agent has over her actions. She knows, in virtue of being its agent, what it is that actually transpires. (There is debate about how successfully she can accommodate cases where something breaks down in the world, such as signing a name with a pen with no ink.) And that is not a mere internal feature of her psychology but rather a feature of being a practical outward-looking agent. Moran argues, similarly, that self knowledge of beliefs is based on avowal of what one has determined one should think.<br /><br />This is not the only form of self-knowledge Moran acknowledges. There is also the kind of insight one gains, not by determining what is to be thought on some independent matter, but what may emerge in, for example psychotherapy. This he calls a ‘report’. <br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">[A] report on an attitude of mine has an explanatory basis, grounded in evidence, and need not imply a commitment to the attitude’s truth or justification, any more than its third-person equivalent would. Instead, the attribution is made in order to identify the states, forces, or whatever else that is driving the actual psychological machinery. (ibid: 89)</blockquote><br />He gives the following example, which shows the different ‘logic’ of avowal and report:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">The person who feels anger at the dead parent for having abandoned her, or who feels betrayed or deprived of something by another child, may only know of this attitude through the eliciting and interpreting of evidence of various kinds. She might become thoroughly convinced, both from the constructions of the analyst, as well as from her own appreciation of the evidence, that this attitude must indeed be attributed to her. And yet, at the same time, when she reflects on the world directed question itself, whether she has indeed been betrayed by this person, she may find that the answer is no or can’t be settled one way or the other. So, transparency fails because she cannot learn of this attitude of hers by reflection on the object of that attitude. She can only learn of it in a fully theoretical manner, taking an empirical stance toward herself as a particular psychological subject. (ibid: 85)</blockquote><br />Moran offers as part of the characterisation of a report the fact that transparency does not hold for it. To determine what one believes qua a report is not a matter of determining, normatively, what one ought to think. In its case, the look is ‘inwards’, or perhaps to one’s behaviour. Equally, there is no normative connection from a report to its endorsement in an avowal. Just because one finds one believes something, that is no reason to think it the think one ought to think, that it is the thing to think on that matter. But the converse pressure does hold. If a report runs counter to what one avows, that ought to be a reason not to hold it. And indeed this is the structure of much psychotherapy: identifying beliefs one has insufficient reason to endorse and thus learning to discard them.<br /><br />Might this structure shed light on the experience of anxiety (at least as I experience it) thus offering philosophical consolation?<br /><br /><b>Avowal, report and anxiety</b><br /><br />Mapped onto Moran’s distinction, the avowal in the earlier anxiety vignette is:<br /><br />There is nothing to fear. Thus I believe that there is nothing to fear.<br /><br />The report seems to be:<br /><br />From my experience and behaviour, it seems that I do not believe that there is nothing to fear.<br /><br />From a third person perspective, the combination of these two conflicting, contradictory beliefs is clearly irrational and yet familiar. It is a familiar trope of psychotherapy to uncover implicit and hidden beliefs using the evidence of behaviour and feelings, often when the analysand is prompted to think about particular life events or relationships. Such contradictions might also be ascribed from a purely third personal perspective by others, taking account of everything an agent says and does. Considering a psychotherapeutic context helpfully reinforces the idea in Moran’s account that a report can still be a form of self-knowledge, even if arrived at via a different attitude to avowal. And in Freudian influenced therapy, the analysand’s acceptance of a belief plays a central evidential role. If a possibility suggested by a therapist is repeatedly rejected after serious consideration then this is fallible evidence that the subject does not have the proposed belief while their accepting it is strong evidence that they do.<br /><br />But from a first person perspective, things remain puzzling in the case of (my) anxiety disorder because the report required no subtle investigation – it was / is manifest in the explicit symptomology and aversive behaviour – and its clear conflict with the avowal (that the thing to be thought is that there is nothing to fear) had /has no tendency to remove the reported belief. That there is an obvious conflict but which shows no sign being resolved either way – either by changing the avowal or removing the report – seems to be a central feature of what (my) dysfunctional pathological anxiety is.<br /><br />In my case, I noticed increasing self-doubt about the sincerity of my claim – made to my partner and to my therapist – that I knew that I had nothing to fear, that I really believed that, that my feelings and behaviour were merely misfiring symptoms of an illness. Although my outwardly directed assessment of genuine risks remained the same, the strength of the reported belief made me doubt the transparent inference from ‘there is nothing to fear’ to ‘I believe there is nothing to fear’. Given that I was self-aware of all this fact too seemed baffling. Why didn’t the avowal that there was really nothing to fear not help?<br /><br />Thus while Moran’s framework and the contrast between avowal and report seems to permit a description of my state for others – as a conflict between rational outward avowal and suborn reported belief and consequent emotion – it left me puzzled as to the experience of the intractability of the reported belief and its associated emotional and bodily expression. On Moran’s account, the authority of avowal is a central aspect of rational agency and so not being able to take up this stance, despite self-conscious awareness both of my own phenomenology but also Moran’s philosophical account of it, seemed bizarre. The framework provided no first person philosophical consolation.<br /><br /><b>Two irrational, phobic comparisons</b><br /><br />My experience of anxiety contrasts with two other irrationalites. Fear of spiders and fear of flying. While puzzling in the way of all irrationality, these seem to behave differently both from each other. Might they provide a way to shed first person insight on anxiety? I will describe my own experience of both in the same spirit of autoethnography. I claim no generality for my particular experiences.<br /><br />Fear of spiders: In the context of a petting zoo, I am offered the opportunity to let a large, harmless spider walk along my arm. I recoil in horror. Rationally, I know that, in this context, any such spider is harmless. There is nothing to fear from the spider. Knowing that the thing to think, I avow that fact: “I know there is nothing to fear”. I completely believe that there is nothing to fear. I have no lingering doubts about safety protocols or the zoo’s knowledge of biology. I have no doubts on that score. And yet I feel bodily fear, expressed in my recoil and aversion.<br /><br />Fear of flying: Before booking a flight, I remind myself of the safety records of the aviation industry and compare the risks of dying driving to the airport with that of taking the flight, finding the latter far smaller. I rehearse some of what I know about how accident inquiries have led to a robust culture of risk management from which the health sector now borrows. Objectively the risks of death by flying are far lower than risks I accept perfectly happily in other areas of life. I freely book my flight. On the day, however, I am anxious about boarding the plane, perspire and have a raised heartbeat. Physiologically, I am afraid. But, unlike the spider case, in this case I do begin to doubt the relevance of the general statistics to this particular case. I focus on the apparent fragility of the wings, and any unhappy mechanical noises despite my crass ignorance of what they might actually mean. With some embarrassment I admit that while I perhaps ought not to judge there to be significant risk, I cannot help believing myself to be at risk. My physiological responses are consistent with my first order beliefs even though I am aware of my own lack of expertise in this judgement.<br /><br />Although there are overlaps, these two cases of irrational phobias have significant differences from each other. Proximity to the spider does not have any effect on my beliefs about its danger. My fear is encapsulated in the bodily recoil. It stands to the rest of my mental economy much as someone else’s fear might: a reaction – of theirs – to be expected, anticipated and managed where necessary. Just as someone else’s fear may be no reason to change one’s view of the situation – of the thing to think – so neither does my own, in this case. <br /><br />By contrast, although, when booking my flight, an appraisal of airline safety is rationally persuasive, on the day of the flight other local factors intervene to undermine this belief. Given my fixation on the potential dangers attaching to just this plane in virtue of the flexing of just those wings and those unnerving mechanical noises, my bodily expressions of fear form a coherent whole with my current doubts. I am no longer convinced, in the moment, that there is nothing to fear. In fact, my fear may have quite specific, if objectively unjustified, foci. Fear makes features of the environment particularly salient. It is not that irrational feelings of fear are reasons for me to change my appraisal of general safety and hence of the safety of this particular plane – as instancing a generality - but fear may play a causal role in sensitising me to specific environmental cues. Even knowledge of this general feature of human psychology may not be enough to undermine a change in judgement or relative risk. Like my assessment of aviation safety, in the moment local factors may trump all general reasons.<br /><br />Do either of these more familiar cases of irrationality shed light on my experience of anxiety and hence promise consolation?<br /><br />I do not think they do. Even if it has a specific set of work-related objects, my fear in anxiety is not narrowly encapsulated as is my fear of spiders. Instead, it has a broader effect on the surrounding mental economy. I think about work irrationally and inappropriately often. I fret about tasks when trying to sleep. I am drawn back to check my work emails in the evening and at weekends. While the fear of spiders suggests a kind of mental compartmentalising, the fear in anxiety seems, as a matter of fact though not a matter of ‘ought’, to serve as a reason to doubt the sincerity of the avowal that I believe that there is nothing to fear. It has no such effect in the fear of spiders.<br /><br />But unlike the fear of flying, fear in anxiety does not simply temporarily trump the world-directed considerations that motivate the avowal (that there is nothing to fear). In the case of flying, a more general belief about aviation safety is temporarily suspended for the duration of the flight during which the avowal is also replaced. But in anxiety, even while lying awake and worrying, I can still judge that this is not an accurate assessment of my objective situation. <br /><br />In the spider phobia case, an encapsulated fear has no effect on my general avowal that there is nothing to fear. In the flight case, that avowal is suspended for the flight. But in anxiety, both the general avowal and the report co-exist in disharmony introducing an opacity between the normally transparent relation of external assessment – that there is nothing to fear – and what I believe. There is nothing to fear, but I do not believe it.<br /><br /><b>Moore’s paradox</b><br /><br />‘There is nothing to fear, but I do not believe it’ is a variant of Moore’s Paradox, identified by G.E. Moore and subsequently discussed by Wittgenstein and others. The paradox stems from the fact that the two conjuncts express possibilities that can be, and often are, both true. And yet there seems something absurd in its first person expression though as a third person description it is perfectly ordinary. <br /><br />Moran rejects accounts based on the pragmatics of assertion as the paradox remains if the contents are merely thought or judged. He also rejects expressivist accounts that deny that ‘I believe X’ ascribes any psychological state and merely presents the putative worldly fact of X. Such an analysis removes any hint of paradox by interpreting the Moore possibilities as simple contradictions. Instead, Moran suggests that the transparency of avowal suggests that our concept belief contains two distinct commitments.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">There are in this way two quite different types of commitment involved in my avowing a belief of mine. On the one hand, in saying “I believe it’s raining out” I commit myself to the state of the weather being a certain way. My avowal of this belief expresses the fact that it is not an open question for me whether it is raining or not. At the same time, however, I must acknowledge myself as a finite empirical being, one fallible person in the world among others, and hence acknowledge that my believing something is hardly equivalent to its being true. (ibid: 74)</blockquote><br />The commitment to a judgement as to some external state of affairs is feature of rational agency, of being a subject capable of taking a view on the world. At the same time, one acknowledges that this is merely one’s particular and fallible stance on a the world. Thus while Moore’s paradox expresses an empirical possibility it clashes with one’s self-conception as an agent forming a commitment that things are thus and so in the world.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">[A]s I conceive of myself as a rational agent, my awareness of my belief is awareness of my commitment to its truth, a commitment to something that transcends any description of my psychological state. (ibid: 84)</blockquote><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">“Taking my beliefs to be true” is not an empirical assumption of the sort that I might make with respect to another person. Rather, it is the categorical idea that whatever is believed is believed as true. (ibid: 77)</blockquote><br />Moran’s account of Moore’s Paradox is offered as further support of his account of self-knowledge as an expression of framing a commitment and thus self-ascribing a mental state as a feature of rational, practical agency. We would expect statements of Moore’s sort to be paradoxical if Moran is right. But I introduced the paradox as an expression of the nature of my anxiety disorder and hence its paradoxical nature is no help in arriving at a kind of philosophical informed but first person understanding of my own experience. <br /><br />In his discussion, Wittgenstein makes the following suggestion of how one might attempt to understand such a statement.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">§105. “Judging from my words, this is what I believe.” Now, it would be possible to think up circumstances in which this made sense. And then it would also be possible for someone to say “It is raining and I don’t believe it”, or “It seems to me that my ego believes this, but it isn’t true”. One would have to imagine a kind of behaviour suggesting that two beings were speaking through my mouth. (Wittgenstein 2009: 201)</blockquote><br />I think that we may actually want to say something akin to this in the case of phobic reactions to spiders and similarly non-rational and encapsulated experiences. One might say: “I know that there is nothing to fear but my body – or my reptilian brain – does not!” In a case where the fear-reaction is bound up merely within a specific situation and has a narrow range of behavioural consequences and no inferential power over other beliefs, it is tempting to talk as though one comprises two agents, one more limited and brute and the other closer to the rational agent as a whole. But such a picture is harder to apply without puzzlement if the emotion is less circumscribed and has more general and widespread consequences for how one feels and thinks.<br /><br /><b>Puzzling shades of behaviour</b><br /><br />One of the central themes in the varied discussions of mental states and experiences (including doubts about the innocence of the very label ‘mental state’) in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations is that:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">§580. An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria. (Ibid: 161))</blockquote><br />The outward criteria discussed are often abilities. For example, the discussion of rule following starts with the example of grasping the meaning of a word. <br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">§139. When someone says the word “cube” to me, for example, I know what it means. But can the whole use of the word come before my mind when I understand it in this way?
Yes; but on the other hand, isn’t the meaning of the word also determined by this use? And can these ways of determining meaning conflict? Can what we grasp at a stroke agree with a use, fit or fail to fit it? And how can what is present to us in an instant, what comes before our mind in an instant, fit a use? (ibid: 59)</blockquote><br />Here it seems that correctly being able to use the word ‘cube’ is the criterion of being able to understand its meaning and the puzzle this raises is how one can self-ascribe such knowledge in a flash since it seems impossible that a potentially infinitely extended usage could come to mind. Rejecting philosophical explanations of which somehow encode the usage into something like a picture or diagram, Wittgenstein suggests that first person avowals are often fallible glad starts:<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">§323. “Now I know how to go on!” is an exclamation; it corresponds to an instinctive sound, a glad start. Of course, it does not follow from my feeling that I won’t find I’m stuck when I do try to go on. (ibid: 112)</blockquote><br />When all goes well, a rational agent can successfully self-ascribe the ability to meet the outward criteria of the state in question. But this does not assume that the criteria are simple behaviours and hence that what is self-ascribed is simply behavioural. Wittgenstein invokes the idea of ‘fine shades of behaviour’.<br /><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">§210. ‘Fine shades of behaviour.’ — When my understanding of a theme is expressed by my whistling it with the correct expression, this is an example of such fine shades. (ibid: 217)</blockquote><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">§192. When should I call it just knowing, not seeing? – Perhaps when someone treats the picture as a working drawing, reads it like a blueprint. (Fine shades of behaviour. – Why are they important? They have important consequences.) (ibid: 215)</blockquote><br />The idea that ‘fine shades’ of linguistic behaviour may be criterial for some mental states and experiences suggests a subtly different response to the linguistic phenomenology. The key tension in my anxiety phenomenology concerns whether I really believe that there is nothing to fear. Moran aims to reconcile the claim that ‘belief’ and ‘believe’ is univocal with it having different aspects or uses. It can be justificatory, in first person avowal, and it can be explanatory of behaviour and other beliefs either from the third person or in a first person theoretical report. He also suggests that his aim is to capture the central case where all goes well from which ideal deviations can be noted (akin to the spirit of perceptual or epistemic disjunctivism) (Moran 2007: 131). This suggests a limit to the kind of understanding his model can provide for pathological cases where transparency is, at least, threatened. It suggests the need to approach the phenomenology taking what seem to be baffling temptations at face value. Anxiety simply can be a state or experience in which an outwardly directed rational judgement that there is nothing to fear can fail to lead to a whole-hearted self-ascription that I believe that there is nothing to fear because of the very clear and manifest experience of fear. That fear motivates at least the suspicion that one does not fully believe the first avowal. And yet, the self-reported belief that there is something to fear has no tendency to pass ‘outwards’ to the judgement that there objectively is. The structure of belief itself seems to be transformed in anxiety despite possession of the philosophical tools to approach it. The rational balance of the two commitments Moran ascribes to the concept of belief breaks down with no tendency for the self-correction of an unavowed report – either undermining the avowal or the reported belief - as often happens in psychotherapy. And hence self-understanding, and hence consolation, in anxiety remains merely partial.<br /><br /><b>A coda on expertise by experience</b><br /><br />One of the standard assumptions about experts is that their testimony is trustworthy, that knowledge can be inherited from their sincere assertions. In healthcare, expert status is increasingly accorded not just to trained professionals but to those who, in virtue of their experiences, have something to say about the nature of illness. One motivation for this might be a graded form of empiricism: that relevant experience is necessary for knowledge and experts by experience have important experience, which is not shared by clinicians in virtue merely of their training. But is such experience also sufficient for a form of expertise?<br /><br />My own experience suggests that this is not a simple question. While experts might be expected simply to put their knowledge of a subject into words, and hence to transmit some of it to those with ears to hear, I have found my illness baffling to me. I have lacked a deeper understanding of what have remained baffling feelings and emotions, continuing to hold conflicting beliefs even while aware of that fact. Since expertise admits of degrees – else there would be no such thing as professional sport – I suspect that one level of sufficiency for a form of expertise is simply to convey some of what it is like to others who have not had those experiences, first hand. But my own illness suggests that those powerful and articulate first persona narratives – of which there is an increasing number - on essentially more confusing and less run-of-the-mill illnesses have achieved something of wonder.<br /><br /><b>References</b><br /><br />Anscombe, E. (2000) Intention. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press <br /><br />Baldwin, T. (2007) ‘The Normative Character of Belief,’ in Green and Williams Moore's Paradox Oxford: Clarendon Press<br /><br />Edgley, R. (1969) Reason in Theory and Practice. London: Hutchinson<br /><br />Kuhn, T.S. (1962/ 1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press<br /><br />Moran, R. (2001) Authority and estrangement. Princeton: Princeton University Press<br /><br />Sellars, W. (1997) Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press<br /><br />Wittgenstein, L. (2009) Philosophical Investigations, Oxford Blackwell<br /><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-47776086110302246122022-02-03T18:19:00.009+00:002022-02-04T09:42:30.861+00:00Kripke's sceptical solution<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEha-HSZAdpTYHgeobVYu05Qd4xwQ0GN5Cw61yWpO2A6F1gJEpFtmjaQziJRvMgMcgl-E4K8wV9XAiSdHR89Y4Lm6cLT4pqMZM6KoGgkDaF9CcDZepRKRZdFljGNztQiiYGaSLJfFjSicw8poGKDifydQF-7KLIbRLnYKfRPucV5MhxjrLOeNoPm1LKo3g=s1360" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1360" data-original-width="880" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEha-HSZAdpTYHgeobVYu05Qd4xwQ0GN5Cw61yWpO2A6F1gJEpFtmjaQziJRvMgMcgl-E4K8wV9XAiSdHR89Y4Lm6cLT4pqMZM6KoGgkDaF9CcDZepRKRZdFljGNztQiiYGaSLJfFjSicw8poGKDifydQF-7KLIbRLnYKfRPucV5MhxjrLOeNoPm1LKo3g=w129-h200" width="129" /></a></div>I’ve been chatting to Ali HosseinKhani about
Kripke and despite his best endeavours, I seem to be in the grip of a confusion
about Kripke’s sceptical solution that I’m finding it hard to shake. Here’s
another attempt to make it clearer to me.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I assume that the dialectic goes something
like this. Kripke deploys a sceptical argument against an intuitive picture of
meaning. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">His argument aims to cast doubt on what appears, pre-philosophically,
to be an everyday ‘metalinguistic’ fact: the fact that one can mean something by
a word. He considers the case of meaning <i>addition</i> by the word ‘addition’
and asks: what justifies the claim that answering ‘125’ is the correct response
to the question ‘what does 68 + 57 equal?’. Two simplifying assumptions are made:
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>that ‘correct’ means in accordance with the standards of one’s previous
usage of the signs involved: what one <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">meant</i>
by them; and,</li><li>that one has never calculated that particular result before. In fact,
Kripke assumes that one has ‘added’ no number larger than 57.</li></ol><p></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Normally if called upon to justify the answer ‘125’ one might give
either of two sorts of response. Arithmetically, one might ensure that one had carried
out the computation correctly. Metalinguistically, one might assert: ‘that “plus”,
as I intended to use that word in the past, denoted a function which, when applied
to the numbers I call “68” and “57”, yields the value 125’ [Kripke 1982: 8]. </span></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Kripke now introduces the sceptical hypothesis that in the past one
might have followed or meant a different mathematical function, the <i>quus</i>
function. On the assumption that one has never previously encountered numbers greater
than 57, this is defined to agree with the plus function for all pairs of numbers
smaller than 57. For numbers greater or equal to 57 the output is 5. He now presses
the question: what facts about one’s past performance show that one was calculating
in accordance with the plus function rather than the quus function, that one <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">meant</i> plus rather than quus?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Kripke imposes two furthers condition on any satisfactory answer to
the question. One is that it must show why it is <i>correct</i> to respond 125 rather
than 5 and, in the dialectic at least, Kripke construes this as supporting normativism.
A satisfactory answer should show why one <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ought</i>
to answer 125. This precludes citing facts about one’s education or training which
now <i>dispose</i> one to answer 125. It may be true that one has such a disposition,
but that will not show that one should answer 125. (One may equally be disposed
to make mistakes when adding large columns of figures but that does not imply that
one should, that that is what one meant to do.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The other is that simply remembering what rules one was following
or what one meant non-inferentially is cheating/spooky.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">He then deploys arguments based on Wittgenstein’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations</i> paragraphs 139-239
to show, apparently, that no facts about one’s past actions, utterances or dispositions
can justify an answer [Kripke 1982: 7-54, Wittgenstein 1953]. Anything one did or
said in the past could equally be interpreted as following or meaning the quus rule.
For example, perhaps one said aloud that one was adding the numbers and by adding
one meant counting up to the first number and then continuing counting by as many
steps along the line of integers as the second number. However, as Kripke points
out, perhaps the word ‘count’ meant <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quount</i>
which is defined as the same as counting but only as far as the number 57 [ibid:
108]. It appears that nothing that one said or did or thought to oneself can justify
the claim that, now, answering ‘125’ is going on correctly in the same way one was
before, in accord with what one previously meant. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In the face of this, he draws on an analogy
with Hume to suggest a sceptical solution. This is partly based on the idea that
while Hume denies a necessitating causal nexus from one singular event to another,
so Kripke denies a necessitating meaning nexus from past intention to future performance.
He suggests that a sceptical solution does not deny the force of the sceptical argument but attempts to re-establish everyday practice without it. I take it that it should be consistent with, ie not threatened by, the sceptical argument which is left intact, not undermined. (Undermining the argument is a ‘straight’ solution.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">So if Hume’s sceptical challenge is to find
the impression that grounds the idea of a necessitating causal nexus, his sceptical
solution of constant conjunction escapes scepticism’s force by a) denying that we need any
such impression for such an idea and b) offering instead something of which we could
form an impression of sorts. (OK: there are problems concerning how we even thought
we had an idea of necessitating causal nexus but I’ll ignore that.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The following passages suggest the
basic idea of Kripke’s equivalent sceptical solution:<o:p></o:p></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
It is important to realize that we are not looking for necessary and sufficient conditions (truth conditions) for following a rule, or an analysis of what such rule-following ‘consists in’. Indeed such conditions would constitute a ‘straight’ solution to the sceptical problem, and have been rejected. (ibid: 87) </blockquote><div><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">If someone whom I judge to have been computing a normal addition function (that is, someone whom I judge to give, when he adds, the same answer I would give), suddenly gives answers according to procedures that differ bizarrely from my own, then I will judge that something must have happened to him, and that he is no longer following the rule he previously followed…From this we can discern rough assertability conditions for such a sentence as “Jones means addition by ‘plus’.” Jones is entitled, subject to correction by others, provisionally to say, “I mean addition by ‘plus’,” whenever he has the feeling of confidence -- “now I can go on!” -- that he can give ‘correct’ responses in new cases; and he is entitled, again provisionally and subject to correction by others, to judge a new response to be ‘correct’ simply because it is the response he is inclined to give. These inclinations… are not to be justified in terms of Jones’s ability to interpret his own intentions or anything else. But Smith need not accept Jones’s authority on these matters: Smith will judge Jones to mean addition by ‘plus’ only if he judges that Jones’s answers to particular addition problems agree with those he is inclined to give, or, if they occasionally disagree, he can interpret Jones as at least following the proper procedure. (ibid: 90-1). </div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;">We can restate this in terms of a device that has been common in philosophy, inversion of a conditional. For example, it is important to our concept of causation that we accept some such conditional as: “If events of type A cause events of type B, and if an event e of type A occurs, then an event e’ of type B must follow… [H]ow do [Humeans] read the conditional? Essentially they concentrate on the assertability conditions of a contrapositive form of the conditional. It is not that any antecedent conditions necessitate that some event e’ must take place; rather the conditional commits us, whenever we know that an event e of type A occurs and is not followed by an event of type B, to deny that there is a causal connection between the two event types. If we did make such a claim, we must now withdraw it. Although a conditional is equivalent to its contrapositive, concentration on the contrapositive reverses our priorities. (ibid: 93-4) </div></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;">A similar inversion is used in the present instance. It is essential to our concept of a rule that we maintain some such conditional as “If Jones means addition by ‘+’, then if he is asked for ‘68+ 57’, he will reply ‘125’.”… As in the causal case, the conditional as stated makes it appear that some mental state obtains in Jones that guarantees his performance of particular additions such as ‘68 + 57’ – just what the sceptical argument denies. Wittgenstein’s picture of the true situation concentrates on the contrapositive, and on the justification conditions. If Jones does not come out with ‘125’ when asked about ‘68 + 57’, we cannot assert that he means addition by ‘+’. (ibid: 94-5). </div></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;">On Wittgenstein’s conception, a certain type of traditional -- and overwhelmingly natural -- explanation of our shared form of life is excluded. We cannot say that we all respond as we do to ‘68 + 57’ because we all grasp the concept of addition in the same way, that we share common responses to particular addition problems because we share a common concept of addition... For Wittgenstein, an ‘explanation’ of this kind ignores his treatment of the sceptical paradox and its solution. There is no objective fact -- that we all mean addition by ‘+’, or even that a given individual does – that explains our agreement in particular cases. Rather our license to say of each other that we mean addition by ‘+’ is part of a ‘language game’ that sustains itself only because of the brute fact that we generally agree. (ibid: 97)</div></div></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mulling this over, it is interesting that
what is sufficient to justify Jones’s, albeit fallible, self-ascription of
meaning</span> <i>addition</i>
by ‘plus’ is merely a <i>feeling of confidence</i> that he can give ‘correct’ responses
in new cases; and he<i> </i>is entitled to judge a new response to be <i>correct</i> simply
because it is the response he is inclined to give. Note also that this is not
based on his ability to interpret his own intentions or anything else. It is,
in other words, a brute inclination independent of any conception of what he
took himself to be doing (cf Ginsborg’s primitive normativity straight
solution). <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This seems
odd because what it justifies (contra Ginsborg’s primnitive normativity) is
the following <i>metalinguistic</i> claim about meaning: “I mean addition by ‘plus’”.
Suppose Jones has read Kripke’s book and knows all about quus and suppose he
wonders whether he has always been adding or quadding. It turns out that he can
justifiably, though fallibly, answer this question in favour of adding rather
than quadding providing he is disposed confidently to give <i>any</i> answer (125 or 5!) and is justified, fallibly, in taking <i>any</i> answer to be the correct
addition. This seems odd.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Suppose, in the past but post 1982, he has sometimes
added and sometimes quadded, equally reliably though the latter only in
philosophy classes. He further knows that signs are arbitrary and, in
philosophical fun, has sometimes reacted to the ‘+’ sign as though it meant
quus. Surely in order justifiably, though fallibly, to claim he now means <i>addition</i>,
he needs to know which of these optional dispositional states he embodies? He <i>might</i>
mean quaddition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But perhaps this is illicit once the
sceptical argument is in play. Perhaps we can no longer say anything about him
<i>meaning</i> anything. Let’s call what remains after the sceptical argument and solution ‘meaning-K’. (I also think that this allows
thinking about <i>truth</i> conditions for meaning-K. The truth about meaning-K is the truth about what justifies, albeit fallibly, claims to meaning.) By Kripke’s stipulation, if he has any
shaped disposition, he means-K <i>addition</i>. (A reason for this might be
that, prior to 1982, the second aspect of Kripke’s account of what justifies ascription
to others of meaning-K would never have fitted meaning-K quaddition.) </span>For it to
be justifiable for <i>others</i> to ascribe meaning-K addition to Jones, Jones must be disposed
to a particular pattern of responses and these must also be endorsed – ie not vetoed
– by their peers.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">So let’s put this account of meaning-K back through the
sceptical argument. We will have to tweak Kripke’s original conditions, much as
Hume’s requirement to find the impression of a necessitating causal nexus has
to be given up once that is not part of the sceptical solution. Kripke’s stipulated
conditions on a response were: (1) determine what we meant by our words in the past
and (2) determine the <i>correct</i> use of them in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I assume that the second has to go, as
dependent on a picture of meaning (not meaning-K) which had a necessitating
intentional nexus. Meaning is dispositional not normative so the best we can offer
is a communal disposition. This is some sort of constraint because what a speaker
is disposed to say, and which their community is disposed not to reject, rules out
many possibilities. We can conjure up a Kripke-ised set of initially platonised variant meanings
– take the various logically possible quus-like functions and put them through the sceptical argument - to get
the slimmed down evidentially equivalent functions. It seems initially plausible that many of these will nevertheless be ruled out by the
test of the sceptical solution (what a speaker is disposed to say, and which their community is disposed not
to reject). Surely we do not generally even mean-K quaddition by ‘+’?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">So the replacement answer for 2 isn’t what
we ought to answer but what we will answer. But can Kripke answer 1? What facts
about our/my past determine which Kripke-ised meaning-K is relevant for assessment
of what I will do now and what my peers will not criticise? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Now we’ve read Kripke, we understand the
quus rule as well as the plus rule. So I and also my peers might mean either by
the English word ‘plus’. Which did I, and we, mean in the past? If my disposition
is the plus disposition, I’ll do one thing. If the quus, I’ll do something else.
Ditto my peers. So do I know, or can I justify a belief, either way in the face of the sceptical argument?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Given that there seem to be two
elements to the sceptical solution, we can think of them independently. Asked
of my own dispositions I’m inclined to offer two possibilities. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">1) Prior to reading any philosophy, I
will simply be disposed to give the <i>addition</i> of any two numbers with that cross sign between them. We all
will! But surely that’s not the point of a sceptical argument? I am equally
prone to disregard Cartesian sceptical possibilities until they are brought to
my attention in a philosophy class. Further, I do not need to believe them either true or likely.
They just have to be possible and evidentially indistinguishable from the
normal picture. So now that I am offered, as a sceptical hypothesis, the idea that my
past dispositions were quadditions, what is the evidence that they were not,
bearing in mind that direct memory access of meanings was ruled out as spooky? So why should I be able to <i>remember</i> non-inferentially meaning-K either? But perhaps I simply try out my current disposition and see what I write? However...<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">2) Prior to being prompted, I do not
know the shape of my current and future relevant dispositions partly because they will depend on a <i>decision</i>,
now post 1982, of whether to add or whether to quad and that difference of
meaning-intention will change what I am disposed to do. (I <i>think </i>I could write meaning-K-intention for that too.) Perhaps such
dispositions are somehow self-intimating. Perhaps I can bind myself now to the
norm (norm?!?) of addition not quaddition, even in fun! But that seems to require the
resources of meaning not mere meaning-K if the latter is just brute disposition. (That is, I <i>do</i> need to take note of my intention to act a certain way even to rule out the quus meaning-K.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">I confess I don't find the options very clear because I am not sure what remains of such ideas as intending to use words with particular meanings or meanings-K once the sceptical argument is allowed. That might be the very nexus ruled out.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What of the community? Here I think Kripke’s previous scepticism does have a clear victory over his own sceptical solution. In the sceptical set-up, whether or not I have access to my own dispositions, I do not have access to the future dispositions of my peers. All evidence of what they have not vetoed in the past is
consistent with quus. So if I am considering Jones and what he means-K, then I have no better evidence for whether Jones and his peers will add or quad. So Jones meaning-K <i>plus </i>rather than <i>quus </i>does not escape the sceptical argument, which is what it was supposed to do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This I think should also cast doubt on the intuitive plausibility of Kripke’s account of the assertability condition, or Jones’ own justification, for Jones saying he means-K <i>addition</i>. He only means-K <i>addition</i> if both conjuncts
are met. But, given Kripkean scepticism, he is never in a position to
justify a belief that the second conjunct will hold: that his peers will not
veto what he does. In the face of scepticism and its infinite quus-like sceptical ringers, he is never justified in singling out any meaning-K for himself, given how meaning-K is partly constituted by others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">So I’m confused. As a sceptical
solution it seems far too vulnerable to the sceptical argument against which it was
supposed to be inoculated.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-25697505817970767982022-02-03T14:32:00.005+00:002022-02-03T14:32:55.258+00:00Abstract: On not believing what one says: my own experience of self-avowal in anxiety<p>As an approximately Wittgensteinian philosopher, I have
always subscribed to a ‘grammatical’ orientation in philosophy in which the key
idea is to describe the conditions under which word use is normally justified.
One feature of this approach is, typically, to favour the public over the
private and hence the need to work to find space for the latter in the
relatively unproblematic context of the former. Despite this, Wittgenstein’s
work also contains discussions of finer grained linguistic phenomenology in
which the <i>wish</i> to say something, or the <i>wish</i> to try to say
something using certain words, plays a role. One instance of this is the case
of secondary sense in which speakers use words in spontaneously novel ways
linked to, but not straight-forwardly justified by, their ‘public’ uses. And
hence there is a tension between the basic orientation towards the description
of public rules of correctness and spontaneous private uses of words which,
nevertheless, are not mere noise.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This tension has been explored in the philosophy of
psychiatry as an approach to psychopathological phenomena such as delusions,
which attempts to tread a middle ground between nonsense (construed as an
absence of sense) and some sort of non-standard and eccentric sense. In this
presentation, I take a more mundane example: my own experience of anxiety and
my rationalised expression of it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In my experience of anxiety, the emotional content of the
anxiety connects to specific stressors: quite specific sources of worry, and
leads to reactions that would make sense in the case of life-threatening
events. Hence, the anxiety reaction is out of proportion with its merely
worrying stimulus. Further, I know that this is the case. Afterwards, I am able
to see that my anxiety reactions were in no sense justified by the low level of
threat that prompted them. Further, in the anxiety state itself, I am also able
to offer suitable arguments for the inappropriateness of the reaction. I would
pass a MCA capacity test for this disavowal of the reaction. From a third
person perspective, it probably seems that I know what is going on and that my
disavowal of my own bodily reaction is correct. I have insight. It is merely
that my body has made a different, worse and irrational judgement.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But while this is the obvious way to apply a grammatical
approach to what I say and do, both in an anxiety state and when describing it
afterwards, the experience of the state has made me doubt it. The phenomenology
of anxiety is not adequately captured by the splitting of cognitive and
affective states elicited by an imaginary dialogue of what I know, while in the
state.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This suggests the following tension. While the grammatical
rules for the ascription – including the self-ascription – of knowledge track
the implicit norms that epistemology aims to make explicit, I wish to say that,
in extremis, I do not in fact know what I say I know, and can justify. The
expression of anxiety is an instance of the tension within Wittgensteinian
philosophy between the public rules and the private inclinations, in this case
further written into bodily reaction. This suggests that there is a similar
difficulty in articulating the content of the experience as there is in
accounting for secondary sense which rules out the possibility of what Travis
calls ‘cognitive prosthetics’.<o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-20036600637364203862021-09-09T10:44:00.034+01:002021-09-09T15:51:40.685+01:00Lingering confusions about disjunctivism (perceptual and epistemic)<p></p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jpyqu4-g-TU/YTnXHdbltgI/AAAAAAAAqWA/FIzBrDCTWGgsLq4G_nU5GVj3RpfLUv3ZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2037/Travis%2Bsunspecs.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="926" data-original-width="2037" height="91" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jpyqu4-g-TU/YTnXHdbltgI/AAAAAAAAqWA/FIzBrDCTWGgsLq4G_nU5GVj3RpfLUv3ZgCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h91/Travis%2Bsunspecs.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div>I attended a virtual workshop given by Charles Travis yesterday, in part of which he described, favourably, John McDowell’s disjunctivism in his ‘Criteria,
defeasibility and knowledge’ (McDowell [1982] 1998a). At the end of the talk, he rather
resisted getting drawn on McDowell’s later discussions of disjunctivism on the
grounds that they were of mixed success. Given his and McDowell’s opposed views on whether
perception has a content, this was not surprising. But it reminds me of what
seems odd in the later discussion in a way that does not turn on McDowell’s
content-view. (The fine picture of Travis is from Maarten Steenhagen's blog <a href="https://msteenhagen.medium.com/the-silences-compared-b8117303490e" target="_blank">here</a>.)<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">McDowell’s content-view forces him to say something that
was not apparent in ‘Criteria…’ The good disjunct and the bad disjunct can share
the same content. What differs is not the content but the <i>way </i>the content is <i>had</i>. </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">On the content conception, the epistemic significance of an experience consists in its having content in the way it does. An experience that is a seeing can be like an experience that merely appears to put its subject in touch with a corresponding environmental reality in respect of what content it has. But a seeing is unlike a mere appearing in <i>how it has its content</i>. Seeings have their content in a way that is characteristic of seeings; they make environmental realities present to their subject. (McDowell 2013: 147 italics added) </p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">Given that the aim is to avoid a highest common factor view, this seems to me to reapproach just that. The way the content is had must <i>not </i>be <i>blankly external</i> to the subject but once we have a distinction of content and the <i>way it is had</i> it seems harder to resist the idea that it is. This may become
clearer, below.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But my confusion today seems to turn on using disjunctivism for
knowledge rather than perception and then re-engineering perception from
knowledge. (This is probably one of those posts where I merely manifest my own crass misunderstandings to my peers to general hilarity. Oh well.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s a bit of a summary of the ‘Criteria…’ picture from my
book.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">McDowell denies that experience of other
people is limited to their bare behaviour, with mentality hidden behind it.
This is the assumption that initiates scepticism about other minds. McDowell’s
rejection of this assumption picks up a claim from elsewhere in his discussion
of Wittgenstein that, to a suitably educated subject, more can be directly
perceived in speech behaviour than mere sound (cf. <a name="ID129"></a><span class="citation"><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">McDowell 1998a</span></span>:
332). In the context of this more epistemological discussion, he puts the point
as follows: “The idea of a fact being disclosed to experience is purely
negative; it rejects the thesis that what is accessible to experience falls
short of the fact in the sense … of being consistent with there being no such
fact” (<a name="ID130"></a>McDowell [1982] 1998a: 387). This underlying notion can
also be applied even in cases where the fact or state concerned is not
literally within the experience of a subject. It can be applied:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><a name="ID131"></a>in at least
some cases of knowledge that someone else is in an “inner” state, on the basis
of experience of what he says and does. Here we might think of what is directly
available to experience in some such terms as “his giving expression to his
being in that ‘inner’ state”; this is something that, while not itself actually
being the “inner” state of affairs in question, nevertheless does not fall
short of it in the sense I explained.<a name="ID132"></a> (<a name="ID133"></a>ibid:
387)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="ID134"></a>Although one person’s inner states do not
themselves fall within the direct perceptual experience of another person, the
fact that they express them can. This idea of expression is <a name="ID135"></a><i>not</i>
one that is consistent with the <a name="ID136"></a><i>absence</i> of the inner
state. So McDowell replaces an account in which all that is visible to an
observer is another person’s intrinsically brute or meaningless behaviour,
standing in need of further interpretation and hypothesis, with one in which
that behaviour is charged with expression.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s perhaps a pity that McDowell’s first discussion of
disjunctivism takes the rather complicated case of others’ mental states since
these require the extra step above. (In the first version of the book I used
McDowell’s discussion of Wright’s M-realism to make this clear but I dropped it
from the second edition.) I mentioned this extra complexity to Travis but he
seemed to stress instead the idea that we do not know how else someone’s anger
or irritation might be manifested than the ways they are. He wasn't concerned with the idea that our experience does not actually go so far as to take in, literally, their mental state. Still, it seems (to me, at least) helpful to note that even in
the good disjunct here, one does not see the other person’s anger but its
<i>expression</i>, even modulo the qualification that the expression is incompatible with the absence of the state. One <i>might </i>say, naturally enough, one <i>sees that</i> they are
angry. But that’s not as innocent as it seems.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, perceptual disjunctivism is an attractive response to
a worry that, because experience <i>seems</i> the same in veridical and illusory cases, the most one experiences is the highest common factor between them. And hence,
even when all goes well, perception cannot be enough to ground knowledge
because, for all one knows, one might be in the illusory case. According to
disjunctivism, when all goes well, the fact itself (following McDowell’s view here) can be visually present to
the subject, it can ‘impress’ itself upon them. Disjunctivism permits a <i>relational </i>concept of experience. The glass of beer itself
can be visually present to a subject. I want to say that glass is part of the
experience, though only in the good disjunct. I’d like to play up the analogy
with singular (de re) thoughts. If so, then the nature of the experience is different
in the two cases because in one it is partly constituted by a relation to a glass enabling, then, a genuine singular thought
about the glass. Things are more complicated for McDowell because, later, he argues that the <i>content</i> in both good and bad disjunct can be the same – given
not in de re but de se terms – but the <i>way</i> it is <i>had</i> differs and hence its epistemic
properties.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Things seem – to me, that is - more complicated in the case
of knowledge, anyway. My problem is with the fact that knowledge is not a matter of
truth in the actual world but also some counter-factual notion that one could
not have been wrong, covering other possible worlds. It’s not just that the
glass is actually present, partly constituting my experience of it perhaps enabling a singular thought. That might
be so even in a case where I do <i>not</i> have knowledge of it because of additional
defeating factors. And here I begin to lose my grip on what the disjunctivist
picture is because I take it that part of its claim is a denial of a highest
common factor view but once we have left the perceptual case, I’m not sure what
counts as the highest common factor. It isn’t the highest common factor of veridical and illusory <i>experience</i> since one might really experience something - see it as it really is - but not realise that conditions are favourable for observing it. It is the highest common factor of <i>apparent</i> <i>justification</i>, too. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps this is the reason that in later work,
McDowell also reverse engineers the notion of visual presence so that it is
suited to underpin <i>epistemic</i> disjunctivism (however that is supposed to work).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s the example he discusses in <i>Perception as a Capacity
for Knowledge</i>. Consider a psychological experience in which subjects with
normal colour vision are presented with colour samples but in non-standard and
misleading lighting conditions. Now imagine that a subject is told that she
will be shown colours in both good and bad lighting conditions for colour
detection but without being able to tell the difference. McDowell suggests that
even if she is shown a sample under conditions which, outside the experiment,
would enable accurate colour detection, it would be false to say that the
thing’s colour is ‘visually present to her’ (McDowell 2011: 46)<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">In these circumstances, she is not in a position to know
that things are the relevant way – that the thing is green – at all, let alone
to know that it is by being in the perceptual state she is in that she knows
that… [A] perceptual state in which a feature of the environment is present to
a subject, in the relevant sense, would have to be a non-defective exercise of
a self-consciously possessed and exercised capacity to get into perceptual
states that put the subject in a position to know, through perception, that
things are the relevant way in the environment. And that is not how it is with
the subject’s perceptual state in the case we are considering… [T]he
experimental set-up confronts her with a specific possibility that the light is,
on this occasion, unsuitable for knowing the colours of things by looking at
them. (McDowell 2011: 46-8)</p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is why I said he was reverse engineering perception
from knowledge. Intuitively, I would have said that – providing the lighting
conditions are actually good – then the actual colour is visually present to
the subject but that they cannot <i>know</i> this because of their background justified fears about the lighting. But – I think – because McDowell thinks that
perception just is a capacity for knowledge, he wants the closest connection
between perception and knowledge. So in a case where perceptual knowledge is
impossible, the object of perception also changes. Visual presence is not
simply being present and in vision but adds in further (non-visual?!) epistemic conditions.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">(My colleague Ali Hosseinkhani has just raised an interesting question. In such a case, what is the subject’s experiential status? “It’s not an illusion, nor a hallucination. Just that the lighting conditions are not guaranteed to be accurate.” Now McDowell has deployed phrases such as ‘ostensible seeings’... </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">‘An ostensible seeing that there is a red cube in front
of one would be an actualization of the same conceptual capacities that
would be exercised in judging that there is a red cube in front of one,
with the same togetherness.’ (McDowell 1998b: 458) </p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">... and perhaps that is what he would suggest here. But it seems odd because an observer fully informed of the situation would surely say that the experimental subject simply is really seeing the green shade of the sample. It is just that she does not know this.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This may connect to Travis’ Fregean point about the
categorical distinction between seeing and seeing-that. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">But, as Frege noted (1897: 149;
1918: 61), ‘see’ has non-perceptual uses. When we say, for example, ‘He sees
that that flower has five petals’ (one of Frege’s examples), ‘see’ is not used
to report perceptual awareness. One way to see this is to note that, while the
petals are on the flower in the garden, and from thence form images on retinas
– they are that sort of thing – that the flower has five petals is not in the
garden. Nor is it on the kitchen table. It is not the sort of thing to be
located, a fortiori, to form images on retinas. Rather, it is the sort of thing
one recognises by exercising capacities of thought. In thought, one can
represent the flower as falling under a certain generality; as being a certain
way there is for a flower to be – five-petalled. (Travis 2015: 46)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For Travis, the object of seeing-that is a that-clause and
hence is constituted of conceptual generalities. It thus takes judgement. The
object of seeing is an extra-conceptual object, an instance of generalities but
not a generality, and requires mere awareness and some minimal notion of ‘uptake’ (about which I remain unclear: I’m not sure what space there is for uptake that is not <i>judgement</i>). <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">McDowell, famously, does not believe that anything is
outside the conceptual. Perhaps this is why he blurs the knowledge claim (that
the colour is green) and what is seen / visually present.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My intuition would be to go the other way. To keep the apparently
simpler case of perceptual disjunctivism relatively clear – stressing a link to
singular thoughts - and work out how to construct the knowledge case as the
cards fall. But his content-view adds a complexity. It introduces a
difference between perceptual experience and singular thought even though both, McDowell suggests, should be subject to a disjunctive account. On his content-view, both veridical
and misleading perceptual experiences can share the same content. But, I assume, successful and misfiring
singular thoughts cannot do this as a singular thought stands in a specific de re
relation to a feature of the environment, without which no such thought is
possible. The content must be different - surely! - even if it seems the same. (There is a literature on what is thought when a singular thought fails: McDowell favours a ‘seeming to think’ account. Email me for the reference which now escapes me!) In fact, McDowell suggests that the content of perceptual experiences
is contextually related not de re to features of the environment but de se to
locations specified ego-centrally (<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">McDowell 2012</span>:
155-6). This is the strange action at a distance of combining happy disjunctivism with the content-view.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>References<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">McDowell, J. (1982/1998) ‘Criteria, defeasibility and
knowledge’ Proceedings of the British Academy 68: 455-79 Reprinted in (1998) Meaning, Knowledge and Reality, 369–94.<o:p></o:p></p>McDowell,
J. (1998b). ‘The Woodbridge Lectures 1997: Having the World in View: Sellars,
Kant and Intentionality.’ Journal of Philosophy, 95, 431–491.
<p class="MsoNormal">McDowell, J. (2011) Perception as a Capacity for Knowledge, Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press. pp36-44<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">McDowell, J. (2013) ‘Perceptual Experience: Both Relational
and Contentful’ European Journal of Philosophy 21: 144-57<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Travis, C. (2015) 'Suffering intentionally?' in Campbell, M.
& O'Sullivan, M. (eds.) Wittgenstein and Perception, London: Routledge<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The fine picture is from Maarten Steenhagen’s blog <a href="https://msteenhagen.medium.com/the-silences-compared-b8117303490e" target="_blank">here</a>. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 13px;">See </span><a href="http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2012/01/charles-travis-sense-of-occasion.html" style="background-color: black; color: #99aadd; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">this</a><span face=""Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 13px;"> and <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2021/05/getting-no-further-10-years-later-with.html" target="_blank">this </a>entry on ‘A sense of occasion’, </span><a href="http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2009/03/travis-on-reasons-reach.html" style="background-color: black; color: #99aadd; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">this</a><span face=""Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 13px;"> on ‘Reason’s reach’, </span><a href="http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2008/08/charles-travis-twilight-of-empiricism.html" style="background-color: black; color: #99aadd; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">this</a><span face=""Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 13px;"> on ‘The twilight of empiricism’, and </span><a href="http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2011/08/travis-on-determination-rule-following.html" style="background-color: black; color: #aadd99; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank">this</a><span face=""Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 13px;"> on the discussion of rule following in </span><i style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Thought’s Footing</i><span face=""Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif" style="background-color: black; color: #cccccc; font-size: 13px;">.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-61986895992168075862021-09-07T18:17:00.010+01:002021-09-07T18:32:37.370+01:00On the death of pets<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A3XA5Kfs_xE/YTeeoX5BY8I/AAAAAAAAqV4/SUdGrI72mlc-j2hKPxLoDUa67Kcsv1wLwCLcBGAsYHQ/s4032/IMG_7884.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A3XA5Kfs_xE/YTeeoX5BY8I/AAAAAAAAqV4/SUdGrI72mlc-j2hKPxLoDUa67Kcsv1wLwCLcBGAsYHQ/w150-h200/IMG_7884.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>Lois’ cat, Snufkin, is dying. He has a terminal heart condition which may be eased a little with medication but it has only one outcome. (Of course, life has only one outcome which is part of the point of this note.) Having found this out last week, I’m still in that state of shocked sentimental misery which, for me, is made worse by my taking every death of someone or something close to me to represent every death, every permanent leave-taking of someone or something close to me. Later, probably – if there is much of a later – the initial shock of the making concrete of something that was inevitable but hadn’t yet been given specific form will ease to leave merely the sentimental misery.<br /><br />(I had a counsellor who decided that it would be therapeutic for me to express more emotion than I generally do. And thus in every session she brought the conversation round to how I felt about the death of my previous – my first – cat Brix, in a scene I had not witnessed but had been described to me by my braver partner. Much emotion then flowed.)<br /><br />My father’s health declined in steps over 10 years. At each decline I’d react with a kind of shock and horror but then get used to it. The first time he had a TIA and was taken away in an ambulance, it seemed awful. But by the third or fourth time, it didn’t seem terrible any more. When he first became delusional, it really upset me. But for whatever reason it happened – often a humble UTI – he always returned to the space of reasons. I’m pleased that that remained so at the point of his death.<br /><br />By contrast, when my mother was rushed to hospital with leukaemia, I was told that I had to get there that very day to see her alive. That turned out to be false: she lived – in hospital – another 2 months. But there still didn’t seem time to get used to it. It seemed like a single slow crash (like an oil tanker heading for an inevitable collision because it cannot be stopped within miles).<br /><br />It is, of course, odd to compare my reaction to the death of my parents with that of pets. But the similarity lies in the affect. Whether or not it is right, I do feel related sadness. That's increased by the way I generalise symbolically from one instance to all others. I re-live all deaths.<br /><br />Still, standing back, the key difference is surely just this: only those in the space of reasons can feel existential dread and regret over lost opportunity. The ending of a narratively structured life – whether or not one thinks that rational beings have narrative lives, we have the capacity to conceptualise them narratively – is something that can seem wrong both for the subject and for others in a way that goes beyond the non-narrative. For a cat, being is more in the moment. Elizabeth Anscombe famously ascribes intentionality to a cat stalking a bird, which implies a telos. John McDowell suggests that animal mentality is is merely a different species of the same genus: mentality. (Donald Davidson took a firmer line: the non-intensional is non-intentional, as it were.) But for cats in my experience, perhaps an association with the unpleasantness of the cat basket continues for weeks. Perhaps there’s some anticipation of breakfast after a long night with a closed kitchen. But the end (the End!) isn’t an end <i>for </i>the cat. Their end is an end <i>for </i>us but not for them. That’s the thing I find hard to keep a grip of. Sentimentality edges its way back in without me noticing. It comes to seem the saddest thing in the world because <i>ending </i>just is the saddest thing in the world.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-39018393623932122282021-09-07T16:56:00.015+01:002021-09-07T17:52:02.579+01:00Implicit bias: the ‘dark side’ of hinge epistemology?<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DlLtWgbJ7io/YTeOqbFrPdI/AAAAAAAAqVw/wEiiwucCprcO9VKXora1b_Tsliw-WC9ggCLcBGAsYHQ/s211/Bias_%2528textile%2529.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="211" height="152" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DlLtWgbJ7io/YTeOqbFrPdI/AAAAAAAAqVw/wEiiwucCprcO9VKXora1b_Tsliw-WC9ggCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h152/Bias_%2528textile%2529.png" width="200" /></a></div>(This entry and the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2F1drv.ms%2Fp%2Fs!AmiT5HmwEUqQhpJFOz6YGhc2UQGUrQ%3Fe%3DaJcMkp&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNGWLoHS6_vGTWZeK1epAVcbwsto2A" target="_blank">talk</a> to which it refers will be dedicated
to the always excellent Sarah Traill whose chairing of a pre-board meeting today
permitted me to log off and get on with writing the slides before logging back
in.)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m giving a talk ‘at’ the Royal College of Psychiatry next week on implicit bias called ‘Implicit bias: the ‘dark side’ of hinge epistemology?’ The idea is that bias is the flipside of what has become known, following some remarks by Wittgenstein in his late masterwork <i>On Certainty</i> as ‘hinge epistemology’ and hence (bias) cannot easily be jettisoned if hinges are a necessary aspect of knowledge.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here is the context. Descartes presents a conception of his own epistemic project
in which, once suitably resourced, he sits in his study in his dressing gown
and reflects upon the status of his knowledge claims. He says:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure in the sciences… To-day, then, since very opportunely for the plan I have in view I have delivered my mind from every care [and am happily agitated by no passions] and since I have procured for myself an assured leisure in a peaceable retirement, I shall at last seriously and freely address myself to the general upheaval of all my former opinions. (Descartes 1911) </p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">He commends this to any
self-conscious epistemic agent. Seen from this perspective, it seems that a self-conscious rational agent <i>ought</i> to be in a position to assess their
beliefs, rejecting all those which do not pass muster. In fact, the start of
the <i>Meditations</i> makes this clear. Its epistemology is individualistic.
Descartes uses the shortcut of the ‘method of doubt’ to reject every belief
except his cogito. From there, he builds back to full normal knowledge.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This provides a context for thinking about bias. Standard
dictionary definitions of bias tend to contain two aspects. One is that bias is
a vice in that it causes a moral harm to others. The other is that it is also a
narrowly epistemic failing. That is, it involves a failure of justification. (Both are in the link to prejudice.) If
Descartes’s views of epistemology were correct then it might be possible to
offer a procedural description of the epistemic failing that bias involves.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">There is, however another way to think of bias: evaluatively neutrally. </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">The term “bias,” as it is commonly used, implies something morally or rationally negative. I mean to use the term in its more general, normatively neutral sense, as meaning “a tendency; an inclination of temperament or outlook.”… I am counting as a “bias” any structure, database, or inferential disposition that serves in a non-evidential way to reduce hypothesis space to a tractable size. Biases, in this sense, may be propositions explicitly represented in the mind, or they may be propositional content realized only implicitly, in the structure of a cognitive mechanism. (Antony 2016: 161) </p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal">So following this idea I will think how bias so understood can be distinguished from epistemic virtues.</p><p class="MsoNormal">In <i>On Certainty</i>, Wittgenstein presents a
distinct view of the nature of knowledge and its relation to certainty.
Crucially, this involves the idea of ‘hinges’. </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">§105 All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more of less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life. </p><p class="MsoNormal">§341 That is to say, the <i>questions </i>that we raise and our <i>doubts </i>depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. </p><p class="MsoNormal">§342 That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are <i>in deed</i> not doubted. </p><p class="MsoNormal">§343 But it isn’t that the situation is like this: We just <i>can’t</i> investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. </p><p class="MsoNormal">§344 My <i>life </i>consists in my being content to accept many things. (Wittgenstein 1969)</p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal">These are held immune from
justification or doubt and it is about them that the game of giving and asking
for reasons turns. So understood, hinges clearly do not fit the Cartesian model
of individualistic rational autonomy. But if this is so, there is no easy way
to distinguish procedurally between hinges and mere bias. Bias comprises hinges
that have an evaluative failing. One cannot merely eliminate attitudes that
lack an appropriate epistemic pedigree, understood in Descartes’ individualistic
way, because that would also eliminate virtuous hinges. Wittgenstein argues
that hinges are presupposed in the context of inquiry giving it the meaning or
content. So there is no possibility of attempting to reconstruct epistemology
in Descartes’ image.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One response to this might be to reject Wittgenstein’s rejections
of the Cartesian ideal. But there is an analogy that suggests that there is
a high price to pay for that. <i>Testimony</i> offers recipients the knowledge of their
testimonial sources. Knowledge can rub off ‘like a contagious disease’ in the
phrase that John McDowell attributes to Gareth Evans. But it is not that we
normally first find independent validation of the knowledge-status of our
informants. If testimony can yield knowledge – as we normally think it can –
then it is a lived reputation of the Cartesian ideal.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Returning to hinges, there is a complication raised by the
traditional reading of Wittgenstein. On this reading, knowledge and certainty are
distinct. So hinges – as <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>expressions of
certainty – are not instances of knowledge. This may encourage the idea of
relativism, which is sometimes ascribed to late period Wittgenstein. But I think
we should learn a lesson from the mid C20 intellectual movement called <i>Oxford Realism</i> (cf J.L. Austin). Knowledge too is certain. Hinges can be instances of knowledge providing that they are true. (I am writing a <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2021/06/rough-first-thoughts-for-booklet-on-on.html" target="_blank">book</a> on this at the moment.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What lessons does this have for an understanding of bias?
Clearly <i>implicit </i>bias is the norm if bias is modelled on hinges. There is
also no procedural way to root out bias since virtuous hinges resemble vice-laden bias. And hence it seems that we need to look to the evaluative aspect of bias
as well as it’s specific content in order self consciously to reassess our
fundamental commitments. There is no guarantee that this can be done easily.
Take the example expressed in the maxim ‘blessed are the peacemakers’. This
might serve as the opposite of bias: a virtuous hinge, expressive of a valued form
of life. But, if it were true, what could <i>make </i>it true? How could we be reassured that this was
an expression of genuine knowledge rather than mere bias? Clearly much work will need
to be done to articulate the view of life that underpins it. If hinges are implicit commitments that aim to track the Good and the True, holding <i>knowledge </i>claims rather than subscribing to bias will be much harder than Descartes suggests.</p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-79050950735115072372021-09-01T14:17:00.002+01:002021-09-07T15:22:05.925+01:00Sydney Smith’s Letter To Lady Georgiana MorpethFoston, Feb. 16th, 1820<br /><br />Dear Lady Georgiana,<br /><br />Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done—so I feel for you.<br /><p style="text-align: left;">1st. Live as well as you dare.<br />2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°.<br />3rd. Amusing books.<br />4th. Short views of human life—not further than dinner or tea.<br />5th. Be as busy as you can.<br />6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.<br />7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.<br />8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely—they are always worse for dignified concealment.<br />9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.<br />10th. Compare your lot with that of other people.<br />11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.<br />12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence.<br />13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.<br />14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.<br />15th. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.<br />16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness.<br />17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.<br />18th. Keep good blazing fires.<br />19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.<br />20th. Believe me, dear Georgiana, your devoted servant, Sydney Smith</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-70077670527128949842021-08-31T13:07:00.008+01:002021-11-10T17:39:02.094+00:00Pickering on family resemblance<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bcEEb68VBbA/YS4aUZEdbxI/AAAAAAAAqUk/Wy6VkkcH9coegjaGszWZjGNJ7Il0q7SkgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/Pickering%252C%2BN1024_1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="771" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bcEEb68VBbA/YS4aUZEdbxI/AAAAAAAAqUk/Wy6VkkcH9coegjaGszWZjGNJ7Il0q7SkgCLcBGAsYHQ/w151-h200/Pickering%252C%2BN1024_1.jpg" width="151" /></a></div>There’s a discussion of family resemblance in Neil Pickering’s
2011/12 paper ‘Extending disorder: essentialism, family resemblance and
secondary sense’. Given that family resemblance trades on resemblances which
are simply likenesses and given Pickering’s critique of the ‘likeness argument’,
I’m surprised that he is as positive about family resemblance as an account of
illness. It encourages me to rethink the conclusion of his <i>Metaphor of Mental Illness</i> as reinstating likenesses but only via their metaphoric construction.
In other words, conditions might indeed count as illnesses via likenesses with
paradigm illnesses (bizarrely in accord with the likeness argument) but only <i>given</i>
prior creative mis categorization of their characteristics.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Anyway, this paper has what looks to be a critique of family
resemblance concepts (FRCs) which is later ‘turned on its head’ and used to highlight a virtue
of seeing illness as a family resemblance concept.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One confusing feature of the paper is that it uses the word ‘extension’
when discussing concepts but not generally to mean the class of things to which a concept
applies (the logical sense of the word). Instead it is more often, at least, the noun formed from the verb ‘extend’. But I wonder
whether this potential ambiguity causes Pickering himself some momentary confusion. That it means
the latter is suggested by the framework of the paper.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Extending a concept refers to
increasing the range of things which can be brought under the concept, or which
fall within a category, or to which a kind term can be applied. The increase is
from a baseline which is the agreed range of usage, reflecting what Wakefield
calls ‘‘relatively uncontroversial and widely shared judgements’’ about what
does (and does not) fall under the concept. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two conditions are then outlined for such extending: determination and coherence.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">An extension should neither go
too far beyond the baseline and include things which should not be included
within the concept; nor fail to go far enough beyond it, and exclude things
which should be included under the concept… Echoing such concerns Horwitz suggests
that to be an ‘‘adequate concept of mental illness’’ a concept must demonstrate
the capacity to ‘‘distinguish conditions that ought to be called ‘mental
illnesses’ from those that ought not’’… The criterion of valid extension
implied by Bellaimey, Horwitz, and Wakefield will be named the criterion of
determination. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">[I]ntuitively, random lists of
items do not imply the existence of any covering concept. What, for example, is
the concept implied by (square root of) 9, the chair I’m sitting on, Beijing, and the Mona
Lisa? What is lacking from this set of items is any sense that they belong
together. There is a need for a criterion of coherence. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This argument for the second condition goes too quickly.
There seems no reason to preclude this arbitrary list as instancing a <i>general </i>concept ie having Evansian generality. Let’s call it:
<i>Pickering’s example of random things</i>. We can think of the list under that generality. Under counter-factual conditions, different objects might have occurred to him.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Pickering describes FRCs thus:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">The family resemblance approach
can be represented schematically and abstractly... Five things (labelled here
A, B, C, D, E) are agreed to fall under a concept—they form the baseline of
agreed examples. There are also five characteristics or attributes the things
collectively have (labelled I, II, III, IV, V).7 Each of the things has four of
the characteristics, but each has a slightly different set: <br />
A [I, II, III, IV] <br />
B [I, II, III, V] <br />
C [I, II, IV, V] <br />
D [I, III, IV, V] E [II, III, IV, V] <br />
Consistent with the main point Wittgenstein seems to be making, there is
nothing these five things all share.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Taking these to be the baseline concept, Pickering then
considers a new case:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Now, let it be asked: does a
further thing (F) which has the following characteristics, also fall under the
concept in question: <br />
F [III, IV, V, VI] <br />
This shares at least three characteristics with D and E. If, on these grounds,
this is allowed to be a new instance of the concept, a further characteristic
(VI) may now be considered a characteristic of things of this kind. And so the characteristics
which are associated with the concept are increased in number and range.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Before mentioning the disastrous logic of this example, let’s
continue with Pickering’s application of the schematic model to a mental
illness case.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Despite its name, the medical
status of ASPD is contested... As described here, this condition has no overlap
with the existing set of characteristics associated with the notion of
disorder, and so on a family resemblance account there is no reason to bring
this instance under the concept. However, this can change. There is reason to
think that there is a subgroup (G*) amongst those exhibiting antisocial
personality disorder who also respond to medical treatments (III), are
typically harmed (e.g. suffer a sense of social isolation) (IV) and have a
genetic predisposition (V)… If sharing three attributes or features with things
which are agreed disorders, is sufficient to make something a disorder, then G*
will be a disorder, and since the gap between F (schizophrenia) and G (anti
social personality disorder) has now been bridged, it too will be a disorder. <br />
In the light of this, a family resemblance account of disorder does not appear
to meet either criterion for extension. The attributes don’t appear to
determine any limits to extension, since they seem to be an indeterminately
extendable list. Further, A and G are now included, yet they share no attributes,
and so it is unclear what the rationale for including both might be.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In fact, Pickering goes on to defend the FRC view of
illness. But it is worth emphasising just how radical this objection would be
if it were plausible. Pickering’s initial schematic example concerns F. But
there is no reason to assume that F is <i>actual</i>. We can explore conceptual
generalities through merely <i>possible</i> instances. So if this case extends
the concept, we can imagine a range of further extensions via a range of
further hypothetical cases. Assuming, following Pickering’s words here –
whether or not he means them himself – ‘a further characteristic (VI) may now
be considered a characteristic of things of this kind’ and then nothing seems
to be excluded from the extension (in both the logical sense and the sense of
extending) of the concept.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is, however, an assumption built into Pickering’s
consideration of this objection in the comment ‘a further characteristic (VI)
<i>may </i>now be considered a characteristic of things of this kind’. Everything
depends on the ‘may’. It is that that permits the extending of the original
concept to anything we like. But it seems to be motivated by this earlier comment
when introducing F: ‘which has the following <i>characteristics</i>’. Pickering
assumes – on behalf of this objection which he will go on to reject but without
actually diagnosing the problem – that what is characteristic of F is
characteristic of the kind or concept, too. But that does not follow. To take
the other famous example of FRC – other than an actual family resemblance such
as the Thornton-look – a specific <i>game </i>might have a characteristic without it
being a characteristic of games. Golf has as a characteristic the fact that it
is played by the wealthy. That’s quite typical of golf. But it does not infect
games as such. So the putative objection depends on an implausible assumption.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Pickering himself rejects this objection saying that ‘the
argument so far considered against the family resemblance approach must be
turned on its head’. The idea seems to be that FRCs balance strict normative determinacy
with an element of flexibility. One motivation for this is to argue that even
non-FRC and essentialist accounts permit <i>some </i>flexibility. He says:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Even if the essentialist were
correct that there is a pattern of necessity and sufficiency in the features of
those things which are agreed to be disorders, it would be a further decision
to conform the notion of ‘disorder’ to that. This decision can’t be justified
by the pattern of likenesses itself—since it is the implications of this which
are in question; rather it must reflect a human decision or practice.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But is that right? Consider Wakefield’s claim that a
disorder is a harmful dysfunction. Suppose we accept that definition, we have
necessary and sufficient conditions for calling anything a ‘disorder’. There is
no further slack aside, say, from what word shape or sound we attach to the
concept. Things are disordered in virtue of being harmful and dysfunctional.
The conditions do not merely group conditions – extensionally, as it were – but
group them <i>as</i> disorders.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course, if we just have the extension of disorder, there
would be a further question of <i>in virtue of what</i> these things are conceptually
united. But Pickering has already notionally conceded more: the necessary and
sufficient conditions for being a <i>disorder</i>.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">(I’m not sure about this, but I wonder whether Pickering’s account FRCs shares something of this picture. The putative objection to FRCs seems to start from a position outside the conceptual order, trying to infer the concept that unites a collection of otherwise unconnected instances. That is why, I hypothesise, FRCs seem so hostage to the fortune of subsuming a new instance under them. There is no sense of <i>in virtue of what </i>items are grouped together. (Hence in my example, being played by wealthy people might get attached, willy nilly, to ‘games’.) It is an alienated picture of our access to our own thoughts. As though we have to run a kind of Davidsonian Radical Interpretation of our own linguistic dispositions to work out the conception that gathers together the extension (in the logical sense). Again, this makes more sense if one recalls the idea that in his paper ‘extension’ generally means an extending but may also mean the logical sense of the class of things to which a concept applies. This <i>may </i>become clearer below.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Anyway, Pickering’s response to the objection above runs
thus:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">But these problems for the family
resemblance approach are more apparent than real. They have arisen as a result
of focusing on the role of the attributes or characteristics of things in
deciding category or kind membership. This focus on the characteristics
represents a mistaken approach to family resemblance. Characteristics in the
family resemblance approach to concepts do not have the determinative relation
to the concepts with which they are associated that they have in the
essentialist approach. Furthermore, this is a strength of the family
resemblance approach, for the kind of relationship the essentialist presupposes
between characteristics and concepts is far from self evident…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">The possibility inherent in
family resemblance of continuously extending the features associated with a
concept indicates the existence of a non-determinative relationship between
those features and the concept they are associated with. It is just because networks
of resemblances exist between quite different kinds of things that the family
resemblance approach necessarily introduces a further factor. In the family
resemblance approach it becomes clear that some judgement has to be made about
whether shared attributes do or do not count towards various human patterns of
behaviour and experience being disorders…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Answering these questions provides
a basis for a boundary of the extension of the concept, and so meets the
requirement for determination. Where it is judged that resemblances of
attributes count for nothing, then the limit of intelligibility in the
application of the concept has been reached.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here I think we have the crux. Indeed it applies to
interpretations of Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule following outside FRCs too (eg Kripke,
Travis, Wright). Does Wittgenstein’s criticism of platonism, of the idea that the
conceptual order is utterly independent of us, leave room for, or indeed
require, that we make things up? The slippery notion in the passages above is
‘judgement’. If I <i>judge </i>that 7 is greater than 5 by an increment of 2, I judge
it but I judge it <i>correctly</i>. Any other judgement would be wrong. I judge in accord
with the rules of maths. But there is another sense of ‘judgement’ in which the
idea of correctness or accord with a standard goes missing and the judgement
itself sets whatever lesser sense of a standard there is. The score - on <i>Pop
Idol</i>, say - is <i>created</i> by the judgement of the judges, as it were.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Pickering wants family resemblance to have a foot in both
camps. In the passage concerning the possibility inherent in family resemblance
above, it sounds as though we get to <i>make up</i> the extension of the
concept (in both senses of extension) but in the next passage - which is the very
next paragraph but with a couple of sentences omitted by me - it sounds as
though we answer questions which have antecedent correct answers and so there
is genuine normative determination.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m not sure he can have it both ways. My suspicion is that this is where the ambiguity of the word ‘extension’ applies. Extending a concept <i>changes</i> the concept. Subsuming a new instance under a concept need not (pace Travis). Normative determinacy applies to the latter, only.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">I wonder, too, whether this has something to do with Pickering’s idea that there are limits to the application of even FRCs. Like counting to 5 for Monty Python’s Holy Hand Grenade, some applications are ‘right out’ or, in this case, simply unintelligible. This, however, seems like a final Carrie-like grip of Platonism from beyond the grave. Conceptual normativity is explained by an appeal to what is unintelligible. But surely, the unintelligibility of the application of a concept to a range of cases flows from the concept involved? No deployment of symbols can be brutely unintelligible without reference to the rules given to the use of words and hence a concept. It cannot <i>explain</i> the limits of that concept. That would be Platonism. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-71495229189197134392021-08-17T10:33:00.029+01:002021-08-17T16:44:09.224+01:00Somatic Cartesianism<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xzNBo8kUHWY/YRt_4cUUPsI/AAAAAAAAqQ0/GvVpizOEceYtIf-SF8qHW76faEkWO_I5wCLcBGAsYHQ/s992/williams-damon-good-will-hunting-ht-mem-171205_4x5_992.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="992" data-original-width="793" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xzNBo8kUHWY/YRt_4cUUPsI/AAAAAAAAqQ0/GvVpizOEceYtIf-SF8qHW76faEkWO_I5wCLcBGAsYHQ/w160-h200/williams-damon-good-will-hunting-ht-mem-171205_4x5_992.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>Yesterday, my therapist, call him ‘P’, asked me - after a relaxation exercise - what I was feeling. I replied by citing the emotional state I was in. P accepted this without implying it was any kind of faux pas. And then he added: and <i>where </i>do you feel it? It wasn’t an unexpected question and so I was able to remind him of the answer I’d said, beforehand, that I’d often give. In some cases, such as nervousness or anxiety, I would be happy to answer: ‘in my stomach’. But for most emotions the question doesn’t seem to me to have any clear answer. <i>Where </i>is my anger at the terrible situation in Afghanistan? The best answer to that might be an explanation of at whom the anger is directed. <div><br /></div><div>(I say: ‘I would be happy to answer’… because I think there’s a gap which is slyly crossed but it need not matter between friends. I think the emotion is merely correlated with bodily sensations; it is not the sensations. This bodily accompaniment sometimes happens but need not. So the ‘it’ in the second question does not refer to the answer to the first. But it would be pedantry to say that more than once. I also accept that contingent indicators of an emotion can be helpful to identify it. I sometimes spot my irritation when tired late at night by subtle changes in my orientation to the world. I hear the snappiness in my voice <i>before </i>I realise that I am irritated. I can see that such indicators can include purely bodily sensations. Perhaps one is holding one’s shoulders tensely and one spots that before the underlying emotion. So I see the point of the question. I just deny that it <i>must </i>have an answer.) </div><div><br /></div><div>Commenting on this later to friends Q and R, Q was quite surprised. Q, too, is a therapist so perhaps his surprise was not that surprising. But surely, he suggested, an emotion such as anger is directed at, or expressed or manifested in, some bodily response or action. If it were not, then it would not be being felt as an emotion. So it must be being felt <i>somewhere</i>? </div><div><br /></div><div>More to my surprise, R wondered, if emotions were not experienced at locations, how they could determine a difference between a normative directedness at embracing another versus punching them? (She cleverly mimed reaching out <i>indeterminately</i>.) </div><div><br /></div><div>I have heard this sort of argument from a colleague expressed directly at self knowledge or awareness of emotions. Unless one knows where an emotion is located in the body, then one cannot identify it and so one cannot be aware of how one is feeling. I can see this for bodily sensations such as tickles or aches. What would it be to say that one often experienced pains or tickle but seldom could begin to locate them? While I think this can happen - some pains seem to shift when one tries accurately to locate them - I don’t think that the grammar of tickles, pains and other sensations could start with these stranger cases. Bodily feelings are generally felt at bodily locations.
But it seems to beg the question to assume that the same must be true for emotions. (Transported across to emotions it perhaps suggests a kind of perceptual model of inner awareness. I think that emotions are generally - modulo the remarks about the sometimes usefulness of contingent signs above - self-intimating.) ‘Feel’ works in more than one way. </div><div><br /></div><div>In fact, R’s question seemed very surprising because she seemed to suggest that an emotion needs a bodily location <i>in order to have</i> normative directedness at a caress rather than a punch. But once an emotion is identified as a free-standing state in bodily space, there will be a huge problem for explaining its normative directedness. This is just what is wrong with Cartesian pictures of the mind. Changing the free-standing state to one in bodily rather than mental space - ie a kind of ‘somatic Cartesianism’ - does not help at all. Better simply to assume its intentional or relational content from the start and note how the word ‘feel’ applies differently to tickles and to emotions. </div><div><br /></div><div>In such conversations, I tend to dig out an analogy with belief. A central role of belief is that when combined with a desire it motivates bodily action. But in this case the somatic Cartesian does not generally insist that the <i>belief</i> must be experienced <i>in a bodily location</i>. Why not? But if not, then bodily location is not necessary for practical - bodily - expression (contra Q’s initial assumption). And hence my view of emotion, too. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have found that a practical problem with discussing emotions with subscribers to somatic Cartesianism is that they take any denial of bodily location to imply a kind of alienation from the feeling. I suppose that if one assumes emotions must have bodily location, and someone denies that latter aspect, it must seem that that person cannot accommodate <i>feeling</i> emotions at all. They - that is, I - must have in mind merely some effete ersatz instead. </div><div><br /></div><div>Later Q sent me a link to a short scene from the film <i>Good Will Hunting</i> in which the rather nasty Robin Williams character meanly harangues the young Matt Damon character (perhaps MD was mean to RW earlier but he is, as RW says, just a kid so RW’s response is altogether shabby). But this scene didn’t seem to say what Q wanted it to say at all. RW doesn’t say that MD’s experiences are insufficient because they are not properly located <i>in his body</i>. (It would, after all, be madness to <i>say</i> that!) He says that MD has never had<i> </i>those experiences directly at all but merely read about them or theorised about them. He has not <i>had </i>or <i>felt </i>them. RW says, for example, that, because he has never been there, MD has never <i>smelled</i> the Sistine Chapel. He does not say that he has never smelled it... <i>in his foot</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>It takes unquestioned commitment to somatic Cartesianism to assume that if one does not experience an emotion <i>at a location</i> then one cannot experience it <i>at</i> <i>all</i> and thus must merely be talking about it theoretically. </div><div><br /></div><div>Obviously, I think there is all the difference in the world between wishing to caress someone out of love and punch them out of anger. Further, I think the anti-Cartesian can offer a better picture of how this can be experienced all the more directly because it is not inferred or read off some free-standing bodily state. <i>Not</i>: “I am feeling a slight tickle behind my left ear so (by induction from past cases?) I must really love you, my dear!”
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-49693418867430934332021-08-06T16:27:00.004+01:002021-08-10T16:49:31.878+01:00PPS to Some notes on having a nervous breakdown<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WG2Fa1llix8/YQ1T3S5YD4I/AAAAAAAAqOs/h_pnK2xS72obyj9SkrP2uVE1gZOrXANrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/rhys-barney-cthulhu-final%2B%25232.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1537" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WG2Fa1llix8/YQ1T3S5YD4I/AAAAAAAAqOs/h_pnK2xS72obyj9SkrP2uVE1gZOrXANrQCLcBGAsYHQ/w150-h200/rhys-barney-cthulhu-final%2B%25232.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>This will be the last of these <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2021/07/postscript-to-some-notes-on-having.html" target="_blank">records</a> until I feel better.
I’m more bored by this than I can say.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Having tried to return to working and failed, I decided to try
a final role of the drug dice and go with an SNRI this time: <i>Venlafaxane</i>. And
again a try at a phased return to working, starting where I’d left off, at about
33% of my contractual hours. It began and then so did the weariness.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I slept for much of the weekend at the end of which England lost,
on penalties, the final of the European football contest they’d been competing
in. I didn’t get to watch that as I’d had to retire to bed during the second
half through simple exhaustion. I’m not a huge football fan but I took my inability
even to stay awake for that epic football moment as a sign that this was not
working and gave up the drug (after a month) though not the return to work.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’d say that I have had mixed success. While coming off
<i>Venlafaxane </i>was nothing like as bad as the dreadful <i>Paroxetine</i>, I have remained
poised on the brink of a kind of physical illness akin to jet lag. Get too
tired and I am unable to hold down food for some days. I don’t think that <i>this </i>vomiting
is psychological – so my body has decided that it is an appropriate response to
both physical and mental unwellness – but I’m obviously at the limit of what I
can tolerate, in part, no doubt, because I am working more or less – but never
more than – my contractual hours. I had hoped that stopping the drug after a
mere month would return me to approximating the health of an unfit 70 year old that I'd reached before starting it.
Not yet, it seems. I remain a stranger to my thing-of-strange-beauty Moulton bicycle, for example.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So here I am. Going to bed before 10pm, unable to exercise,
easily being sick for physical or – separately – mental reasons. I think I’m
not mad. (One reason for coming off <i>Venlafaxane </i>was that it obviously affected
my aesthetics in a dark unpleasant <a href="https://alan-the-alien.blogspot.com/2021/07/episode-99.html" target="_blank">way</a>.) But this is August: fewer work meetings,
more sun, less darkness than the season to come. My work will get more intense,
my mood will naturally tend to the depressive end of things, my dreams will turn to Cthulhu’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn</i>. <o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-89011650816574068522021-07-25T13:27:00.010+01:002021-07-26T19:08:45.443+01:00An ongoing conversation with Neil Pickering about likeness, metaphor and illness<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AMbFakhAuF4/YP1XHAcBdPI/AAAAAAAAqNQ/hEdrZ4av9mMM9pjuv989cKAI4uStiH_FQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1105/Pickering%2BMetaphor.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1105" data-original-width="728" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AMbFakhAuF4/YP1XHAcBdPI/AAAAAAAAqNQ/hEdrZ4av9mMM9pjuv989cKAI4uStiH_FQCLcBGAsYHQ/w132-h200/Pickering%2BMetaphor.jpeg" width="132" /></a></div>Neil Pickering generously replied to some comments I’d made
about his work on my blog <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2020/07/neil-pickering-on-illness-as-metaphor.html" target="_blank">here</a>. I’ve replied thus. <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Neil,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many thanks for these helpful comments. May I ask three
follow up questions to check I understand? You don’t need to answer them, of
course. If you do, they are in bold below.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In one reply you say of Szasz and Wakefield “I think I’d
say: they both think the likenesses –
which must be either literal or non-existent – will do the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re both wrong, and in the same way.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I realise that I’m not totally sure what ‘the work’ is. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think that Wakefield thinks that <i>dysfunction</i> is a
likeness, a qualitative feature of (perhaps) all illnesses such that combining
it with <i>harm</i> gives a sufficient condition. So he answers the question ‘In
virtue of what is this an illness?’ in part by saying ‘dysfunction’. He might
equally answer the question: ‘Is it true that X is an illness?’ by saying ‘Yes
it is literally true that it is an illness, in virtue of it being a harmful dysfunction’.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It doesn’t quite work the same way for Szasz. He thinks that
mental illnesses are not really illness. To say they are is to deploy a
metaphor as he understands metaphor which makes the claim – as you say here – false
and a mere myth. He doesn’t think that likenesses do the work of establishing
the illness status of mental illness. But he does think that they help do the
work he wants: to show that mental illnesses aren’t illnesses.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So is ‘the work’ resolving a genuine dispute in a way that
begs no questions? In other words, is it that the dialectical context of an ongoing
dispute is an essential part of ‘the work’? Had there not been a dispute and
had people simply given – say – Wakefield’s positive answer from Day One, would
there be no <i>work</i> to do?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(If that’s the case, then I agree that the likeness argument would not do
<i>that</i> <i>work</i>. But then I think that because nothing could ever do <i>that
work</i>, that’s not such news to me. Nothing is non-question begging! Hence my
caution about conceding ‘quacks like a duck’ once one see’s where that argument
is heading! (Perhaps I should have said: quacks <i>as</i> a duck but likeness is
Pickering-brand terminology and I wouldn’t want to tamper!))<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An analogy. I assume no one disputes the chemical composition
of water (roughly!) and there’s even a broad enough consensus to treat it
almost as essentialists do (roughly!). So the answer to the question ‘In virtue
of what is the substance in this bottle water?’ is generally: ‘In virtue of it
having the same chemical structure as all water does’. Chemical composition
serves a function as a likeness. But it doesn’t do ‘work’ in the sense of being
deployed in an ongoing dispute about categorisation. That conversation is over.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(As some sort of Wittgensteinian, I do not believe in Putnam’s
magical theory in which the world individuates itself after we offer a single
baptism, our meaning carried away by fairies or storks or whatever. But I do think that we have more
or less adopted chemical composition as a criterion of being water.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>So a basic question: is the water example a ‘likeness
argument’ on the Pickering view of likeness? <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Second, do you think it a metaphor? <o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think I can imagine that the very idea that a fluid has a ‘structure’, as captured in school chemistry, might have started by requiring some sort of
metaphor. Fluids? <i>Structures</i>? I was brought up by radical sociologists
of science – eg Simon Schaffer of <i>Leviathon and the Air-pump</i> – so I know
these things take ‘work’. But by now it is hard to think that - once we have a
grasp of the sort of thing we mean by the phrase ‘chemical structure’ then - water’s
having a structure of H2O is a metaphor. What’s left of the literal if we think
that?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So on my initial reading of your position, likenesses are
not just accepted criteria – such as the water case – but have to be in active
disputes. Second, you have an alternative positive suggestion, given that likenesses
cannot do ‘the work’, turning on metaphors. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was that that gave me the three-fold contrast. <o:p></o:p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
Szasz uses likenesses to try to argue that
mental illnesses cannot be illnesses. (He’s bound to fail according to your
very strict requirement.) He then uses his reading of metaphor to explain what
the ‘wrong’ (for him) view of mental illness as illness amounts to (a mere
metaphor, a myth, a falsehood). </li><li>Wakefield uses likenesses to try to argue that
mental illnesses are literally illnesses. (He’s bound to fail according to your
very strict requirement.) He – thinks he - has no need of metaphors because he
takes dysfunctions to be partial criteria, akin to chemical composition. It’s
all very literal. </li><li>And – and obviously I’m worried about typing this – I took
you to be saying that yoking ‘illness’ to ‘mental illness’ took a kind of
imaginative miscategorising, positively described as metaphor. Not literally
true but not false either.
</li></ul><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><b>Is that - roughly - right?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You kindly suggest that you see some virtue in my final
thought. That’s linked – as I’m sure you know – to Travis’ account of rule
following in his book <i><a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2011/08/travis-on-determination-rule-following.html" target="_blank">Thought’s Footing</a></i>. He connects it to a distinction between ‘prior’ and ‘novel’ understanding which
is, in effect, the distinction between a descriptive thought that one can have
in advance of events turning out as they do and a singular thought, in the presence
of particular events, as they come to pass. Travis stresses the gap between what it is possible to think before events come about and what it is possible to think only once they have. That gap in the metaphysics of thought (Russell, Frege) is the gap that so entertains us, quasi-Wittgensteinians. So one might say that every
application of every rule – every descriptive word to a particular case
entertained under a singular thought – was metaphorical. That’s quite pokey!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But if we step back from that brink then where do we draw
the line? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And I wanted – teasingly – to try to do to you what you did
to Bill Fulford who was doing this to everyone else: recontextualize and point out a
question being begged. You ask: from whose perspective can we highlight
likenesses in active disputes? Since they will always presuppose a perspective,
but in an area of active disagreement, then they cannot be used to resolve the disagreement.
Claims about likenesses beg questions. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In this case, I wanted to ask, from whose perspective do we
draw the distinction between imaginative metaphorical mis-categorisations, which
extend the use of words, and literal categorisations as just more mundane
applications of a word to cases to which it literally applies? I wanted to
imply that your hunch that mental illness was an interesting metaphor was no
better grounded than Wakefield’s hunch that it is a literal and mundane application
of the baseline criterion of dysfunction. That wasn’t to hand him victory, of course, but
just to say that you are – as Zaphod Beeblebrox was famously described – ‘just
this guy’ or rather just another guy <i>in </i>the debate, not as it were, <i>above </i>the
debate. (Putting it like that sounds awful, sorry! It wasn’t a <i>moral
</i>accusation.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course, in doing this, I was putting <i>myself</i> <i>above</i>
the debate. Oh how shallow I always am! Sorry.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tim<o:p></o:p></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-41167116654711045072021-07-14T12:07:00.005+01:002021-07-14T12:18:11.927+01:00No doubt diminishing returns on hinges and sceptism<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wF099ragWGw/YO7HrWprtkI/AAAAAAAAqMA/fqVj3mVEDU4lg1I1ZiCU89tV1dfH13QYACLcBGAsYHQ/s189/hinge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="189" data-original-width="142" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wF099ragWGw/YO7HrWprtkI/AAAAAAAAqMA/fqVj3mVEDU4lg1I1ZiCU89tV1dfH13QYACLcBGAsYHQ/w150-h200/hinge.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>Gloria asked me: “Is the broad claim here this, i.e. that a
framework of hinge-knowledge precludes our having to deal with the challenge to
knowledge claims stemming from phenomenal indiscernibility? In effect, that
this framework becomes a sort of transcendental condition that sculpts the
space of epistemic possibilities in such a way that the very move to raise the
spectre of phenomenal indiscernibility now becomes illegitimate?”<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One way that hinges might be used to block scepticism is
this. One concedes the MP version of closure and hence one looks vulnerable to
a MT version which argues from the fact that we don’t know we’re not BIV (or
any other relevant phenomenological indiscernible) to the fact that we don’t
know some ordinary knowledge claim. But then while one concedes that we don’t
know that not-BIV, we are committed to not-BIV as a hinge. Hinges are not
knowledge claims but commitments of a different sort which lie outside closure.
So not knowing not-BIV is no threat to ordinary knowledge. Pritchard argues
this. He accepts that we are committed to hinges but not as either knowledge or
as knowledge-apt belief (ie reason responsive belief). Hinges are commitments
but not the sort of propositional attitude that can come under closure. Wright
gives a pragmatic acceptance version of hinges according to which it is
reasonable to act as though they are correct. It’s a rational bet.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even if this were coherent - and frankly Pritchard doesn’t
tell us enough while Wright gives us an obviously inadequate picture - it would
still leave open the following possibility. While we realise that we have
always a-rationally accepted hinges in the past, now we want to know whether it
is reasonable to believe we’re not-BIVs. Now that that question has been raised
in a philosophy class, we want to run the closure argument either way. What’s
to reassure us that the propositional content that we’re not-BIV is held for
good enough reason? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I see no hope this way.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You ask - reasonably enough - whether a knowledge-based
version of hinges (according to which they are conceptually structured, are the
objects of attitudes and, even more, are known) provides a reason to rule out
sceptical ringer arguments. Frankly, I’m not sure. I didn’t try to sell you my
idea of hinges - as bits of knowledge held in place by holistic considerations
and serving as the framework for the explicit asking for reasons - as an answer
to scepticism. I’m proceeding by elimination. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hinges cannot be just animal certainties - as Stroll and
Malcolm suggest - because they are / would be blankly external to our epistemic
practices. (And the fact that we don’t check the checking of apples looks to be
a problem if this animal fact is external to our epistemic practices. It looks
like an oversight.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hinges cannot be extra-conceptual quasi conceptual entities
as Moyal Sharrock suggests because there’s no conceptual space for that. (Here
I add in a premises about the resolute reading of LW.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They cannot be what Pritchard and Wright say.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So they must be conceptual. But if so and if not the
non-epistemic attitudes of Pritchard and Wright, they must be contributions to
our epistemic standing. I can only think they are known. That’s the argument
from elimination.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">OK so now you raise the standard sceptical argument from
indiscernability / sceptical ringers. What could I invoke? Austin? McDowell? I
need a way to suggest a difference between an actual possibility of being
misled and a merely idling philosophical one. If there’s an actual possibility
I should have addressed about the apples then I don’t know they were apples
even if they were and I was lucky. But if it is idle talk of what might have
been in the Matrix or a dream then I do know. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One thing: LW’s worry that Moore cannot achieve very much by
saying ‘I know’ is neither here nor there. Sincerity isn’t enough. About a
third of OC goes after the wrong target by worrying about what isn’t achieved
in the ‘I know’. ‘I know’ expresses objective certainty about the content of a
knowledge claim but it does not, just by saying, achieve or guarantee it. This
doesn’t imply that knowledge isn’t factive. It just implies that saying ‘I
know’ isn’t factive. It seems remarkable that LW made such heavy weather of
that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Might that be enough? Knowledge is a genuine state achieved
by ruling out real possibilities of error but, as Austin says, ‘enough is
enough’. Better to focus on ‘he knows’ than ‘I know’ but also to realise that
even that always leaves space in the game for the question: ‘Do you <i>really
</i>know that he knows?’. ‘If he knows X then X, after all. Do you know X?’ But
that question idles unless we can give it point.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-47049114897474924372021-07-09T11:37:00.009+01:002022-02-08T14:23:30.639+00:00Postscript to Some notes on having a nervous breakdown<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--isRJh6ctOs/YOgmj7hpzMI/AAAAAAAAqK0/Nq6pnPC2o8IvQmi19Km0ezQ4m-NOWPCrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Brave%2BNew%2BWorld.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--isRJh6ctOs/YOgmj7hpzMI/AAAAAAAAqK0/Nq6pnPC2o8IvQmi19Km0ezQ4m-NOWPCrQCLcBGAsYHQ/w148-h200/Brave%2BNew%2BWorld.jpg" width="148" /></a></div>Shortly after my <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2021/05/some-notes-on-having-nervous-breakdown.html" target="_blank">previous meagre effort at autoethnography</a>, I
started a phased return to work. My managers have been very generous in not
pushing me to return quickly and so I started working towards a full return
after a lengthy 8 weeks. Any such return, akin to returning from annual leave,
carries the additional initial stress of returning to unanswered emails. I was
relieved to find only 2,000 but that was still a little daunting. Strangely,
however, it was not tackling them but being sympathetically asked about my
health in the third week that prompted a full-on return of anxiety reactions. The
thought of my anxiety illness, and its impediment to my possible continued working, itself
had become a prompt for the anxiety reaction. The dragon ate itself. I stopped
the attempt at working and two days later felt perfectly fine.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I spent the next two weeks trying to build stamina for working
by writing and submitting a couple of philosophy papers. Those two weeks fitted
the hope that I’d had four months before of what sickness leave might be. I
realised, for example, what I ought to think about Wittgenstein’s <i>On
Certainty</i> for the first time in 30 years. (Quite often, in philosophy, it does not seem that one has had an idea or made a choice but, rather, one spots the action at a distance of previous embedded convictions. Hence one simply sees what one <i>ought </i>to think or to have thought all along. One experiences ‘the because’.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I returned to a second attempt at a phased return a little
before starting a fourth mood altering drug: Venlafaxine. Two days into taking
it I woke feeling madness again: a slippage from direct contact with the world
of facts and feelings. It was immediately obvious on waking that I wasn’t the
same, sane person. (‘Oh God, Lois, I've gone mad again!’) But then the next day the clouds cleared and I felt sane and
almost quite happy for a week before new side effects started: exhaustion
prompted by a tiny run and lasting 10 days and the physical illness of jetlag:
no appetite, tiredness, nausea, temperature dysregulation and the sense of a
body as lumpen rather than a source of agency. Still, I’m not mad. I’ve been
able to think philosophy and even be imaginative. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(This, sadly, undermines a theory I’d had that male libido
is an expression of Kantian reflective judgement: a concept-less seeking of
conceptual form. The ‘ability to judge an object in reference to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">free lawfulness</i> of the imagination’ in
which there is ‘a subjective harmony of the imagination with the understanding
without an objective harmony’ [Kant 1987: 91-92] I can currently manage Kantian
reflective judgement. But the other…)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Waking up in the morning is now even more of a struggle than
it has always been. Exhaustion always encourages anxiety, perhaps mediated by
the thought that I would not be ‘up’ to managing challenges that arise. So, via
its side effects, the drug also causes the very symptom I’m taking it to
relieve. While it produces a kind of wooziness, it is the nauseous wooziness of
jetlag rather than the wooziness of a too early but somehow justified G&T before
lunch with an elderly aunt. On a bad day, it also makes me simply physically sick. I don’t even feel immune to anxiety: just a slight reduction in
its hold on me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’d always hoped that medication would be a good thing. I
had thoughts of soma in <i>Brave New World</i>. But it seems a Faustian pact.
If I take a drug that makes me feel like this, a little less human, a little
less alive, fundamentally physically sick, perhaps I can carry on working. But is that right?<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A PPS <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2021/08/pps-to-some-notes-on-having-nervous.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-81120407510298412692021-07-08T12:35:00.013+01:002021-07-10T11:43:04.483+01:00Avrum Stroll’s book Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9KhiXN7zxM/YObi4Duh8tI/AAAAAAAAqKs/E5r4d2RLAz8A1dPA2CHDAypB3xGTCYPuwCLcBGAsYHQ/s250/Avrum-Stroll-Philosophy-1972_250x250.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="188" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9KhiXN7zxM/YObi4Duh8tI/AAAAAAAAqKs/E5r4d2RLAz8A1dPA2CHDAypB3xGTCYPuwCLcBGAsYHQ/w150-h200/Avrum-Stroll-Philosophy-1972_250x250.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>I’ve been re-reading Avrum Stroll’s book <i>Moore and Wittgenstein
on Certainty</i> (Stroll 1994). Stroll’s book subscribes to a non-propositional
reading of hinges and so is related to Danièle Moyal-Sharrock’s 2007
<i>Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty</i> (Moyal-Sharrock 2007). But
unlike the latter, Stroll does not give a very technical analysis of the
non-propositional nature of the hinges. It does not follow, for example, from their not possessing
bipolarity though they look like propositions. Hence he avoids Moyal-Sharrock’s
bit where she says it and the bit where she takes it back. (By this I mean that she uses the non-propositional nature of the hinges to say they are not possible objects of knowledge - or any other attitude - while at the same time arguing that they can be transformed into relevant meaning-related doppelgängers. So they are not mere nonsense strings - cf Conant - but still they cannot be known. They are a significant form of none-sense.) Rather, Stroll argues that Wittgenstein
moves from a quasi-propositional view to an animal and instinctual view as <i>On
Certainty</i> goes by.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll also stresses the idea that scepticism is self-defeating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Wittgenstein’s foundationalism, even
in its absolutist form, thus differs from those of the tradition in being
striated. These two features—the world and the community—thus stand fast in
different ways, that is, in having somewhat different presuppositional
relationships to the language game. Taken together they are what philosophers
have called the external world. Both aspects exhibit a kind of objectivity—an intruding
presence—that impinges upon human beings and to which in diverse ways they must
conform. Neither aspect is open to obsessive doubt or to revision. Wittgenstein’s
“solution” to the problem of the existence of the external world is that no
sensible question can be raised with respect to either of these aspects. Their
existence is presupposed in any formulation of the problem. Therefore to
question their existence, as the sceptic presumably wishes to do, is
self-defeating. In even trying to formulate its challenge scepticism initiates the
process of its own destruction. (</span>Stroll 1994<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">: 181)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">One reason for this is the role that language plays in
articulating any sceptical doubt:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But even the form the sceptic’s
challenge takes—the linguistic format to which it must conform so that another
can understand it—presupposes the existence of the community and its linguistic
practices. The sceptic’s doubts are thus self-defeating. (ibid: 180)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So the anti-sceptical argument floats at least partly free of the exact
nature of the hinges. Scepticism is defeated via a claim of being self-stultifying
rather than the specific nature of the hinges. It is not, for example, that
their non-propositionality is used to block closure or directly to deny the
sense of what scepticism proposes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So what is the role of hinges? One hint comes from an earlier
summary of the link between hinges and scepticism. Their role in characterising
Wittgenstein’s foundationalism is what they contribute to defeating scepticism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Wittgenstein, as a foundationalist,
also asserts that nothing could be more certain than that which stands fast for
us, but in <i>On Certainty </i>his discussion makes no reference to the regress
difficulty. Given his form of foundationalism the regress problem does not
arise. It arises for traditionalists because they assume that the question, How
do you know that that which stands fast for us is certain? is always
applicable. And they assume that because they think that the foundation and
what rests on it belong to the same category. But for Wittgenstein’s form of
foundationalism the question is not applicable and, in fact, embodies a
category mistake. One cannot sensibly ask of that which is certain whether it
is known (or not known) or true (or false); for what is meant by certitude is
not susceptible to such ascriptions. The sceptical question thus need not be
answered. (ibid: 148)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll proposes that Wittgenstein is a foundationalist albeit of a
novel kind because the foundation for knowledge is not itself known. In other
words, he offers an account which aims clearly to separate knowledge and
certainty.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As we have seen throughout this work,
he rejects the idea that what is foundational is susceptible to proof, the
adducing of evidence, truth or falsity, justification or non-justification. Whatever
is so susceptible belongs to the language game and thus to a <i>different
category </i>of human activity from <i>das Fundament. </i>Wittgenstein’s genius
consisted in constructing an account of human knowledge whose foundations,
whose supporting presuppositions, were in no ways like knowledge. Knowledge
belongs to the language game, and certitude does not. The base and the mansion
resting on it are completely different. This is what Wittgenstein means when he
says that knowledge and certainty belong to different <i>categories.</i> (ibid:
145)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The picture is complicated by the fact that <i>On Certainty</i>
contains two views of hinges.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">As I have indicated in earlier
chapters, there are two different accounts of F [<i>das Fundament</i>] in <i>On
Certainty. </i>One of these—the earlier—is propositional in character. It
clearly derives from Wittgenstein’s response to Moore, who thinks of certainty
in propositional terms. As I stated earlier, when Wittgenstein speaks of hinge <i>propositions
</i>as immune to justification, proof, and so on, we are dealing with the
earlier account. The second account is completely different. It begins to
develop gradually as the text was being written and comes to dominate it as it
closes. On this view, there are several candidates for F, and all of them are
non-intellectual. Among these are <i>acting, being trained in communal
practices, instinct, </i>and so on. (ibid: 146)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The transition from the one to the other is hinted at by the fact
that even on the former view, where hinges are called ‘hinge propositions’, their actual nature is qualified.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[W]hat Wittgenstein is calling <i>hinge
propositions </i>are not ordinary propositions at all. Such concepts as being
true or false, known or not known, justified or unjustified do not apply to
them, and these are usually taken to be the defining features of propositions.
(ibid:146)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This picture is more like Moyal-Sharrock’s. Such hinges are
technically non-propositional despite looking conceptually articulated, the
sorts of items that it would seem understandable for Moore to claim might
be known. The connection between the first and second view of hinges stems from
the origins of the hinges even of the quasi-propositional picture.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">These propositions are not the
products of intellection, reflection, trial and error, or experimentation;
rather, they are aborbed by each of us in the course of our daily lives. The
notion of absorption is intertwined with Wittgenstein’s denial that
ratiocination is the ground that supports the epistemic structure. This notion
plays a major role in his account of the community. We acquire communal practices,
such as being a native speaker, by absorption rather than by explicit learning.
As Wittgenstein puts it elsewhere, we <i>inherit </i>our picture of the world. This
is another way of saying that we absorb the foundations that make the language game
possible. (ibid: 155)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll suggests, however, that even this half way house encourages
a misreading of the nature of the certainty on which our epistemic practices
rest.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Why did Wittgenstein eventually
discard the propositional account in favor of one that is not propositional? I
believe the answer is that he recognized that if one thinks of certitude in
propositional terms—as Descartes and Moore did—the tendency to think of such
propositions as being <i>known </i>would be irresistible. And this is the
inference he wished to resist. (ibid: 155)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Hence the move to construe certainty as something primitive,
instinctual, animal, practical rather than theoretical or perceptual, and
inherited. Thus <i>On Certainty</i> contains both an initial
quasi-propositional view of hinges – albeit one where they are not known or
justified and hence not really propositions – and also a more radical animal
and practical certainty.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">His first reaction consisted in
asserting that what he was calling hinge propositions are not propositions in
any traditional sense of that term and, in particular, that they are not mental
– a “kind of seeing, as it were.” Neither are they straightforwardly empirical—though
they look as if they are. Even the idea that they are “grammatical rules” was
seen to over-intellectualize the point he was trying to make. Instead he began
to conceive of certainty as a mode of acting. The idea that acting lies at the
bottom of the language game (instead of any system of propositions) is a new
and radical conception of certainty. Certainty stems from one’s immersion in a
human community in which rote training and the inculcation of habits create the
substratum upon which the language game rests. This non-propositional
conception of certitude thus sharply separates Wittgenstein from the tradition.
(ibid: 155)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[T]his second account of certainty
takes many different forms depending upon the particular contrast Wittgenstein
wishes to highlight. There are three such main forms: (1) that certainty is
something primitive, instinctual, or animal, (2) that it is acting, and (3)
that it derives from rote training in communal practices. In all of these the
major contrast with his former view is that what stands fast is the product of reasoning
or intellection. Insofar as propositions or even pseudo-propositions or grammatical
rules are conceived of as the products of rational activity, the new view
stands in opposition to any such account… <br />
These three strands—<i>instinct, acting, </i>and <i>training</i>—are different.
If they were to be analyzed further, which Wittgenstein, of course, never had
time to do, they might well turn out (as I believe) to be in tension with one
another. But I think that Wittgenstein meant them to be part of a single
complex idea that he wishes to contrast with the propositional account. It is
thus possible to find an interpretation that welds them into a single
(admittedly complex) conception of that which stands fast. On this
interpretation, what Wittgenstein takes to be foundational is a picture of the
world we all inherit as members of a human community. We have been trained from
birth in ways of acting that are nonreflective to accept a picture of the world
that is ruthlessly realistic: that there is an earth, persons on it, objects in
our environment, and so forth… This picture is manifested in action. When we
open a door our lives show that we are certain. Certainty is thus not a matter
of reflection about the door but a way of acting with respect to it. All
animals, including humans, inherit their picture of the world, and like other
animals much of our inheritance derives from early training – “something must
be taught us as a foundation” (OC<i> </i>449). (ibid: 157-8)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll’s account of the second view of hinges is thus akin to
Malcolm’s ‘Wittgenstein: The relation of language to instinctive behaviour’
(Malcolm 1982). Malcolm plays up some key paragraphs from <i>On Certainty</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If the shopkeeper wanted to
investigate each of his apples without any reason, in order to play safe, why
doesn’t he have to investigate the investigation? And can one speak here of
belief (I mean belief as in religious belief, not conjecture)? Here all
psychological terms merely lead us away from the main thing (OC 459) <br />
In order to have ‘absolute certainty’ must not the shopkeeper try to determine
not only that these things are apples, but also that what he is doing is trying
to find out whether they are apples, and in addition that he is really counting
them? And if the shopkeeper doesn’t do this, is this because he ‘believes’, or ‘knows’,
or is ‘certain’, or is ‘convinced’, or ‘assumes’, or ‘has no doubt’, that these
are apples and that he is counting them? No. All psychological terms, says
Wittgenstein, lead us away from ‘the main thing’ (die Hauptsache). (Malcolm
1982: 19)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Am I not getting closer and closer to
saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice
of language, then you will see it (OC 501).<br />
Logic cannot be described! I take this to mean that it is not appropriate for
Wittgenstein to say either that he ‘knows’, or ‘believes’, or is ‘certain’, or
is ‘convinced’, or ‘assumes’, or ‘does not doubt’, that his name is L. W., or
that this is called a ‘hand’, or that the law of induction is true. None of
these terms are correct. What does it mean to say: ‘You must look at the
practice of language, then you will see it’? What do you see? Well, you see the
unhesitating behaviour with which a person signs his name at the end of a
letter or gives his name to a bank clerk; or uses the word ‘hand’ in
statements; or makes inductive inferences; or does calculations; and so on. What
you see is this unhesitating way of acting. This is the ‘logic’ of language
that cannot be described with psychological words. It is too ‘primitive’, too ‘instinctive’,
for that. It is behaviour that is like the squirrel’s gathering nuts or the cat’s
watching a mouse hole. This is why Wittgenstein says it is something animal (OC
359). (ibid: 19-20)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll characterises the animal and instinctual nature of
certainty as standing in contrast to any view of hinge propositions, pseudo-propositions
or grammatical rules as the products of rational activity. Certainty stands
outside rational activity, the space of concepts or reasons. As Malcolm says,
it is like the squirrel’s gathering nuts or the cat’s watching a mouse hole.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The key virtue of this account is that it is clear how certainty can
be non-propositional and non-conceptual. It is shared with creatures who lack
language and conceptual abilities. At the same time, as Anscombe stresses,
animal behaviour can have a kind of unity and purposiveness. In fact, contra
Wittgenstein and Malcolm’s comments, psychological concepts <i>do </i>find their
application in a cat stalking a mouse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But despite that qualification, the main problem is that it lies
too far from the epistemic practices it is supposed to ground. Stroll himself
says: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">We have been trained from birth in
ways of acting that are nonreflective <i>to accept a picture of the world that
is ruthlessly realistic</i>: that there is an earth, persons on it, objects in
our environment, and so forth… This picture is manifested in action. When we
open a door our lives show that we are certain. Certainty is thus not a matter
of reflection about the door but a way of acting with respect to it. <i>All
animals, including humans, inherit their picture of the world... </i>(ibid: 157-8
italics added)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There is here a mismatch between the merely animal and accepting a
<i>picture of the world</i>, moreover one that is <i>realistic</i>. The latter
requires the conceptual abilities that the former rules out. So Stroll’s own
account is inconsistent. He links acceptance of the picture with action. One
manifests acceptance through activity. But while acting <i>as though</i>
one has a picture of the world might characterise merely animal behaviour, it
is not sufficient for rational agents, who are also able to form conceptually
articulated judgements about the world. They actually <i>do have</i> a <i>conception </i>of the
world. Further, some hinges, such as the famous ‘here is a hand’, seem to be direct
codifications of aspects of conceptual mastery (cf McGinn and, to an extent, Coliva). Hence the attempt to
distinguish the animal from the conceptual seems misguided. Others, such as
that the world has existed for a long time, seem clearly to be beyond mere
animal possibilities of expression or manifestation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll’s account – and Malcolm’s too – stands in need of a key bit
of augmentation. While certainty might be more a matter of action than
perception and such action might have something in common with purposive animal
action, still what is the connection between rational animal activity and the
possession of concepts? And in so far as certainty for such agents can be
conceptually articulated, into what chunks does it divide and what is our
attitude to them?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">My hunch is that, whether or not Stroll is right that Wittgenstein
moved from a quasi-propositional to a non-propositional animal view of
certainty, such a move is a misstep. I think we can retain some key
features of his (Wittgenstein’s on Stroll’s reading) picture without embracing
that move. So hinges are held without specific arguments for them but as part
of a conceptually structured inherited world picture. One aspect of them so
holding is the certainty of action in accord with them. That is, there are
behavioural manifestations of holding a hinge. But the behavioural
manifestations of rational agents are expressions of tacit conceptual mastery, not brutely extra-conceptual animal
certainty. And because they are held as a kind of tacit background for enquiry,
we would usually have no idea what an attempt to state first person knowledge
of them was meant to be doing (cf Conant). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The main violence this view does to Wittgenstein’s text is to play
down the distinction between knowledge and certainty. Knowledge is certain, too (cf McDowell and Travis).
But not all elements that are known form part of the <i>foreground </i>of epistemic practices.
In other words, Wittgenstein overplayed the idea knowledge is a game of explicitly asking
for and offering reasons. (Nor is doubt symmetric with all knowledge.) The capacity to acquire knowledge may require sensitivity to reasons (such as defeaters) but sometimes
we get knowledge almost for free ie. for the cost of entry into the game at all.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><b>References</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Coliva A. (2010) <i>Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense</i>
(London/Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Conant, J. 1998, ‘Wittgenstein on meaning and use’, <i>Philosophical Investigations</i>
21, 222–50. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Malcolm, N. (1982) ‘Wittgenstein: The relation of language to instinctive behaviour’ <i>Philosophical Investigations, </i>5: 3-22 </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McDowell,
<a name="ID3936"></a>J. <a name="ID3937"></a>(1995b) <a name="ID3938"></a>‘Knowledge
and the Internal’, <a name="ID3939"></a><i>Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research</i> 55, <a name="ID3940"></a>877–93. Reprinted in <a name="ID3941"></a><i>Meaning,
Knowledge and Reality</i>, <a name="ID3942"></a>395–413.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McGinn, M. (1989) <i>Sense and Certainty. A Dissolution of Scepticism</i>, Oxford,
Blackwell. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Moyal-Sharrock D. (2004) <i>Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty</i> (London/
Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillian). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Stroll, A. (1994) <i>Moore and Wittgenstein on Certainty</i>, New York, Oxford University Press.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Travis, C. (2005) ‘A sense of occasion’</span></p></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-41273245314394639962021-06-30T17:39:00.014+01:002021-09-07T17:45:41.876+01:00Rough first thoughts for a booklet on On Certainty<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JVRmR-xZmbg/YNyehxb9LeI/AAAAAAAAqJY/dl37voQJ39M3r-MdiqOW3bLvVIp1t60gQCLcBGAsYHQ/s393/FE3E918B-C6A8-4CC7-B4ED-B294C000712B.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JVRmR-xZmbg/YNyehxb9LeI/AAAAAAAAqJY/dl37voQJ39M3r-MdiqOW3bLvVIp1t60gQCLcBGAsYHQ/w127-h200/FE3E918B-C6A8-4CC7-B4ED-B294C000712B.png" width="127" /></a>
Wittgenstein’s On Certainty contains a commitment to the existence of hinges: items - of some sort - which are ‘held’ fast and about which inquiry in some sense turns. My aim is to see whether this basic idea can be combined with a plausible account of knowledge and then to see what happens to scepticism. Along the way I will discuss my differences from Norman Malcolm, Avrum Stroll, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Annalis Coliva, Marie McGinn, Duncan Pritchard, Crispin Wright and Michael Williams. <br /><br />Now hinges might be extra-conceptual and purely animal behaviours: the Malcolm and Stroll view (Stroll thinks that Wittgenstein slowly moves to this from a more propositional view). Perhaps the animal certainty with which my cat uses her limbs is some form of hinge for her. But Stroll and Malcolm link this view to the rational standing of linguistic agents too: people with inherited ‘realistic pictures’ of the world. I follow neo-Fregean thinking here. If hinges contribute to the epistemic standing of rational agents then they must be conceptual. They must be something for the agent and that implies they are entertained as something like a Fregean sense. That is, they lie in the realm of the conceptual, the space of reasons. Thus one key claim of this book is that Wittgensteinian hinges are conceptual items standing in the space of reasons.<br /><br />Against this, one might object that we not stand in any specifically epistemic relation to hinges. That denial may be claimed to be part of the point of Wittgenstein’s discussion of hinges. But if so, what is it that they do for the agent? Why are they not blankly external to him/her? Two general strategies exist in the literature to respond to this question. <br /><br />First, one might claim that hinges are non-epistemic but contribute in some other way to a rational agent’s mental economy via some other sort of propositional attitude. Both Wright and Pritchard suggest this. I do not think that either Wright’s or Pritchard’s proposals seem plausible even by their own terms. Wright makes the attitude a piece of prudential reasoning, severing the connection from knowledge. Pritchard conjures up a bespoke propositional attitude (akin to Andy Egan’s conjuring up of ‘bimaginings’ in the philosophy of delusion) but a) does not specify its functional properties and b) disguises this lack behind his further construction of an ‘uber-hinge’.<br /><br />Second, one might deny the conceptual or propositional form of hinges while locating them outside the merely animal. Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Annalis Coliva (and in a sense Stroll too) do this. For Moyal-Sharrock, this depends on a semi-technical notion of propositional form. Since hinges lack ‘bipolarity’ they do not count as propositions. But their status with respect to sense is not akin to nonsense as resolute readers of Wittgenstein (e.g. Conant) would hold. Technically, they lack propositional status and hence cannot be objects of propositional attitudes or knowledge. Conveniently, however, it is possible to take a hinge and convert it into a meaning-related doppelganger so as to explain how it can seem to have an empirical sense. I do not think that there is conceptual space for this, however. Such hinges are not mere syntactic patterns. They must be patterns with some sort of use. But what use? Not an empirical use. Nor are they akin to tautologies: emptied of all specific empirical content. So what could they be?<br /><br />I take it that hinges lie within the space of reasons, are conceptual and contribute to an agent’s epistemic standing even if they do not form premises for arguments to knowledge that the agent makes. Their holding might contribute to the doxastic responsibility of the agent. Contentiously, I take it that they are known even if they are not known as the result of an inference nor a direct perception. (Michael Williams is a sometimes ally of this point.) They are part of a conceptually structured world picture held in place by holistic considerations.<br /><br />Wittgenstein suggests, however, that they differ in some respects from other knowledge claims. Now it may be tempting to suggest that a difference lies in the fact that knowledge claims are advanced for good enough reasons but are not certain. Coliva implies this with her description of mere criteriological ascription of knowledge on a roughly Baker and Hacker line on criteria (contrast: McDowell's rather more plausible view). This, however, seems to me to be wrong for reasons that McDowell - speaking perhaps as a late representative of Oxford Realism - has outlined especially in response to Brandom. Knowledge, too, is certain.<br /><br />But the difference is suggested by something right in Marie McGinn’s and in Coliva’s rather different accounts. Certainties comprise the framework of representational techniques. Normatively, ‘This is a hand’ can serve as an instruction for the correct use of ‘hand’. The utterance is conceptual and prescriptive/normative. So far this accords with McGinn and Coliva. But, going beyond their descriptions, accord with such a prescription involves something. What? I propose that it is knowing that this is a hand. In other words, I take the idea that hinges are normative – a view suggested by both McGinn and Coliva – implies that they are known, a view contrary to McGinn and Coliva.<br /><br />Now knowing that this is a hand might seem to involve two distinct achievements: grasp of the meaning of ‘hand’ and a practical recognitional grasp of hands. As Wittgenstein stresses, agreement in meaning involves agreement in judgements. This is shown in the application of ‘hand’ to the world. So knowledge of hinges is a form of tacit knowledge - knowing how to deploy a set of representational techniques - but which also carries with it ‘knowledge-that’. It enables a speaker to recognise a hand in paradigm conditions.<br /><br />This rapprochement is made more plausible by my previously articulated account of tacit knowledge as conceptually structured, context specific practical knowledge. Linking the tacit to the conceptual via McDowell’s relaxed account of the conceptual helps to locate certainties within the space of reasons. It helps to show how hinges can seem akin to the animal while still being both conceptually structured and also knowledge.<br /><br />Both Wittgenstein and commentators seems to make heavy weather of Moore’s ‘I know’ (see especially Coliva). One worry seems to be that Moore misrecognises knowledge as a mental state that could serve as a source of certainty. But that doesn’t seem to me to be the problem. A sincere ‘I know’ claim expresses objective certainty though it cannot guarantee it. ‘I know’ is fallible. So it can be a mental state - as Oxford Realism takes to be uncontentious - even if not a source of certainty. Nor is it a problem that Moore attempts to enumerate what he knows (even the usually reliable Williams gets caught up on this because of his own signature dish: epistemological realism). That too seems perfectly possible on a fallibilistic mental state picture. But the fallibility of knowledge avowal does not apply to knowledge itself, contra what Coliva assumes when she suggests merely a defensible criteriological relation between reasons and knowledge. Knowledge is factive and we can be both fallible about the contents of a knowledge claim and the fact that we think we know it. Too much ink is spilled worrying about the ‘I know’ while a retreat to ‘he knows’ would have been clearer. Moore's failure to say something in his strangely contextualised assertion does not carry over as to whether he actually knows there is a hand. (On this point: imagine if his defence in court had been that he did not know that he had a hand. Imagine if Wittgenstein’s pair of tree labelling philosophers claimed in court that they had not known there was a tree in front of them, in daylight, with non-defective vision. As Avner Baz stresses, sometimes knowledge is a burden that is not easily denied. That we do not know the point of a hypothetical knowledge claim does not imply that no knowledge is had.)<br /><br />If hinges are known then neither Pritchard’s non-belief nor Moyal Sharrock’s non-propositional view will help defeat scepticism. Neither of their arguments could be used, for example, to block closure. So the full weight of an anti-sceptical argument will fall on whether supposedly known hinges can evade sceptical hypotheses in something like the way that rejecting a merely highest common factor picture of experience in response to the argument from illusion can undercut scepticism about perceptual knowledge. What’s needed is the idea that our epistemic standing can take in how the world is even if there is no additional assurance from outside our epistemic practices that it does. There is, however, a partial analogy between hinges as construed here and disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge. Of course, the picture offered by disjunctivism of a direct embrace of the world in object-dependent experiences or singular thoughts will not apply to all hinges. But there is an analogy in the use of samples and the role of showing in the later Wittgenstein. The representational system cannot float free of the world because its elements are made up of the world.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-39489104875396903282021-06-24T14:27:00.007+01:002021-06-25T14:25:41.241+01:00The contemporary importance of the idiographic in mental healthcare<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FMj-peA8PfU/YNSITLddJwI/AAAAAAAAqHk/KSeJ3dWYwOkqFlIIm8bFrG5qva2XxHr4wCLcBGAsYHQ/s216/Rickert.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="143" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FMj-peA8PfU/YNSITLddJwI/AAAAAAAAqHk/KSeJ3dWYwOkqFlIIm8bFrG5qva2XxHr4wCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Rickert.gif" /></a><span style="text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal">In response to concerns about the subsuming of individuals under essential
general psychiatric diagnostic categories, there have been calls for an
idiographic component in person specific diagnostic formulations. The
distinction between the idiographic and nomothetic was introduced by Windelband
as his contribution to the <i>Methodenstreit.</i> However, as I have argued
elsewhere, it is unclear what the distinction is supposed to comprise. In this
chapter, I attempt to shed light on the motivation for the distinction by
looking at a number of recent approaches to healthcare that share a concern
with a focus on individuals. Despite this shared element in their motivation, I
argue that none help to articulate the nature of the idiographic itself. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>This chapter broadens the central claim of my chapter in the 2018 <i>Yearbook
of Idiographic Science</i>, here drawing on a clue from Windelband’s student
Rickert to argue that there is a role for the idiographic in healthcare though
not as a form of judgement, understanding or intelligibility but rather a
specific singular interest in an individual. It is this that also underpins
developments in healthcare related to the individual or person..</span><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Introduction<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One of the standing concerns expressed by mental health service
users and clinicians alike about contemporary diagnosis in psychiatry is that
it risks pigeon-holing subjects rather than respecting their individuality. As
an anonymous reviewer of one of my papers once put it: ‘Time and time again the
categorical, pigeon-holing, approach to diagnosis has to be bent in order to
accommodate the individual account’ (Thornton 2008b). The suggestion seems to
be that the criteriological model of diagnosis that lies at the heart of the <i>Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual</i> and the <i>International Classification of Diseases</i>,
is, by itself, inadequate to capture, and perhaps respect, patients and service
users as people in all their individuality (American Psychiatric Association
2013; World Health Organization 1992).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This concern forms the motivation for proposals in psychiatry such
as the World Psychiatric Association’s Idiographic (Personalised) Diagnostic
Formulation which called for an ‘idiographic component alongside
criteriological diagnosis’ (IGDA Workgroup,
WPA, 2003: 55). It aimed ‘at understanding and formulating what is important in
the mind, the body and the context of the person who presents for care’ (ibid:
55). Taking my lead from the word used by the World Psychiatric Association, I
will call this concern for capturing the individual nature of the patient or
service user a concern for ‘idiographic’ understanding. This, however, raises
the question of the nature of the idiographic. As I will argue, it proves
harder to analyse than it might first appear. Having looked at its origins in Wilhelm
Windelband’s rectoral address, I will look at a number of contemporary approaches
to healthcare that, I believe, are motivated by the same concern with the
individual. I will argue, however, that none is able to shed light on the idea
of idiographic understanding. At the end, I will suggest that the felt need for
a special form of understanding can be met, instead, in a different way. It
lies in an interest in individuals which is also hinted at by Windelband but
also his student Rickert.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This chapter sketches a broad overall picture of a number of
healthcare ‘philosophies’ seen through the conceptual lens of the idiographic.
It thus writes a cheque that would need to be redeemed by careful and sober
argument. That, however, will not be offered here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Windelband and the idiographic<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first articulation of the idiographic was given by the
post-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband in his 1894 rectoral address (Windelband
1980). Windelband worked in the broad tradition of the <a name="_Hlk29478727"><i>Methodenstreit</i></a>,
which concerned methodological distinctions between the natural and social
sciences. It is usually associated with a distinction between understanding and
explanation exemplified, for example, in Karl Jaspers’ <i>General
Psychopathology</i> (Jaspers 1997). Understanding and explanation are supposed
to be distinct ways of conceptualising their subject matters, with the former
tied to human thoughts, feelings and actions and the latter to the totality of merely
natural events.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rather than understanding versus explanation, Windelband
contrasts idiographic and nomothetic sciences. He links that distinction,
primarily, to a very general distinction between the particular and the
general. Such a distinction – between distinct <i>forms</i> of judgement in
different disciplines – looks to be tailor-made to capture the contrast between
a pigeon-holing approach implicit in general criteriological approaches in
psychiatry and a form of judgement that captures patient and client
individuality. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US">In their quest for knowledge of reality, the empirical
sciences either seek the general in the form of the law of nature or the particular
in the form of the historically defined structure. On the one hand, they are concerned
with the form which invariably remains constant. On the other hand, they are concerned
with the unique, immanently defined content of the real event. The former disciplines
are nomological sciences. The latter disciplines are sciences of process or sciences
of the event. The nomological sciences are concerned with what is invariably the
case. The sciences of process are concerned with what was once the case. If I may
be permitted to introduce some new technical terms, scientific thought is <i>nomothetic
</i>in the former case and <i>idiographic<b>
</b></i>in the latter case. Should we retain the customary expressions, then
it can be said that the dichotomy at stake here concerns the distinction between
the natural and the historical disciplines. (Windelband 1980: 175-6)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Windelband remarks that the distinction he is attempting to frame
is not based on a distinction of substances: sciences of <i>nature</i> or natural science (Naturwissenschaften), versus the sciences
of the <i>mind</i> (Geisteswissenschaften). Such
a distinction is hostage to the fortunes of that dualism. If the reductionist project
of explaining mental properties in physical terms were successful then that contrast
would be undermined. Instead it is a methodological distinction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even with these characterisations in play, however, the distinction
as so far introduced is not clear. Consider the contrast between ‘<span lang="EN-US">what is invariably the case’ and ‘what
was once the case’. There are three problems with using this contrast to characterise
a notion of ‘idiographic’. First, it threatens to slip back from a methodological
distinction of how a subject matter is approached to the underlying nature of the
events in question (whether, as a matter of fact, they are invariant or unique).
Second, a substantive distinction does not explain <i>in what way</i> an idiographic understanding differs from any other sort.
Third, the <i>uniqueness</i> of its subject matter
cannot separate the idiographic and nomothetic. The gravitational forces on a mass,
for example, depend in principle on a vector sum of its relation with every other
object in the universe and thus some of the events described by physics are likely
to be unique.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Elsewhere I
have suggested that the </span>appeal of idiographic judgement stems from a recoil
from subsuming human individuals under general conceptual categories – from pigeon-holing
people – and hence instead attempting to understand them in other ways or other
terms, a kind of ‘individualising intuition’ (Thornton 2008a, 2008b, 2010). The
problem is then to explain what novel form of judgement would address this
task. If judgement in general takes a subject predicate form – s is P – then there
are two elements to consider: the referential element and the predicational element.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The referential element does not seem to be a hopeful place to
look to draw a distinction between nomothetic and idiographic. Consider the
traditional deductive-nomological model of explanation as an example (Hempel
1965). This contains general laws (hence the name). But it also refers to
particular circumstances in the <i>explanans</i>.
Whether an adequate formal model of explanation or not, since the DN model of
explanation is designed to fit paradigmatically nomothetic sciences mere
singular reference to particular circumstances is not sufficient to distinguish
a different form of intelligibility.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But ‘individualising’ the predicational element seems equally
unpromising albeit in a different way. Such a predicate would have to be designed
for a particular single element carrying with it no possible application to, and
hence comparison with, other individuals. What could such a predicate be? What property
would be picked out such that it could not possible apply to other cases? The
closest idea seems to be a kind of name designed for a specific individual
(person or event). But that collapses this proposal back into the referential
element of the judgement. In neither way can the ‘individualising intuition’ be
satisfied through a novel form of judgement.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think that the ‘individualising intuition’ is a widespread
in recent responses to/against conventional psychiatric medicine. And so it may
help to identify how it can be achieved by looking at other initiatives
concerning healthcare. In what follows, I aim for breadth rather than depth. I
will merely paint an abstract picture of the lie of the land. Justifying the
connections I sketch breathlessly would require careful argument for which
there is not space here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Person Centred Medicine<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The ‘individualising intuition’ is one of the motivations for the
recent growing popularity of a long-standing approach to healthcare, in
parallel with the growth over the last thirty years of evidence-based medicine
(EBM), namely person-centred medicine (PCM). Though the roots of PCM lie in,
among other places, Paul Tournier’s advocacy of ‘medicine for the person’,
conceptions of the clinician-client relationship in psychotherapy, and models
of patient-centred care, it has recently risen to prominence just as EBM has
seized the clinical imagination. While EBM stresses the importance of evidence
based on large scale population side studies, PCM presses the idea that the
proper focus of healthcare should be on individual people construed as persons
rather than, say, merely biological systems. The former emphasises the role of
generalities in medicine, the latter individuals. This is not to say that there
<i>must</i> be an incompatibility between looking to population-wide studies as
the basis for reliable evidence and to individuals as the focus of such
evidence-based care but the apparent need to re-emphasise the latter suggests
an inchoate concern that the patient or client as an individual risks being
lost from sight.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The nature of PCM is, however, particularly contested. For some
authors, the contrast between persons and patients is key, for others not. For
some, the main contrast with persons is sub-personal systems. For others, it is
illnesses. For yet others, the contrast is a focus on the needs of patients
rather than on the needs of clinicians. Despite having a particular focus on
individual patients, understood as persons, conflicting claims are made about
the values necessary either to maintain that focus or as a proper response to
it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Given these competing views, is there anything essential that all
forms of PCM must hold? I have argued elsewhere that any plausible version of
PCM must commit to two claims (Thornton forthcoming). Ontologically, the level
of the person is an irreducible and significant feature of ontology and a
proper focus for healthcare. Epistemologically, not only is knowledge of the
human person (human beings, people) possible and significant in healthcare,
there are also irreducible forms of person-level knowledge which are important
to healthcare. A commitment to PCM is thus a substantive commitment to
ontological and epistemological claims. Do either of these claims shed light on
the nature of the idiographic?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think not. First, although the two commitments are distinct – because
they concern ontology and epistemology respectively – with respect to the
question addressed here, they can be reduced to one. What makes the <i>knowledge</i>
specifically personal is the <i>ontology</i> known. This, I suggest, following the
philosophers Wilfrid Sellars and John McDowell, is characterised by a
distinction between two conceptual orders: the ‘space of reasons’ and the ‘realm
of law’ (McDowell 1994; Sellars 1997). The irreducibility of the level of the
person follows from the irreducibility of the space of reasons to the realm of
law. The former is a normative realm of reasons, motives, rules that applies to
rational subjects. The latter is a realm of mere generalities concerning
mindless happenings in broader nature. So, does a characterisation of the space
of reasons shed light on the idiographic? To consider this I will turn to
narrative understanding.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Narrative medicine<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The World Psychiatric Association suggests, as an alternative to
the characterisation of ‘idiographic’, that what needs to be added to
criteriological diagnosis in a more comprehensive model is a <i>narrative</i>
formulation. Any such move faces a strategic choice. Is the very idea of
narrative interpreted broadly to have wide application, even at the risk of
evacuating it of specific content, or is it tied to particular literary notions
of narrative, thus risking narrowing its application and making it inapplicable
to non-literary contexts? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At its broadest, we might use ‘narrative’ to label the kind of
intelligibility required for any exploration of the space of reasons: charting
the reasons, motives, rules and actions that characterise the human realm. That
would also be a way to fill out the ‘understanding’ side of the ‘understanding
versus explanation’ contrast in the <i>Methodenstreit</i>. Understanding could
be characterised as narrative understanding of the space of reasons and
explanation could chart the nomological realm of law. If so, the normative
structure of narrative offers a genuine complement to generality based criteriological
diagnosis. It offers a view of the rational coherence of a subject’s thoughts
and feelings, of why they think and feel what they do according to them, over
and above what is merely generally or statistically the case, in accord with
the realm of law.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Despite this difference, narrative accounts are nevertheless
couched in <i>general</i> terms and consequently narrative understanding does
not address the felt need for an essentially singular judgement purpose built
for an individual. This is because they are conceptually structured and,
according to a very plausible principle, concept mastery is an essentially
general ability. The most famous statement of this is the philosopher Gareth
Evans’ Generality Constraint.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">It seems to me that there must be a
sense in which thoughts are structured.... I should prefer to explain the sense
in which thoughts are structured, not in terms of their being composed of
several distinct elements, but in terms of their being a complex of the
exercise of several distinct conceptual abilities.... Thus if a subject can be
credited with the thought that a is F, then he must have the conceptual
resources for entertaining the thought that a is G, for every property of being
G of which he has a conception. (Evans 1980: 100-104)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Because narrative understanding of others rides piggy back on
conceptual thought in general, it inherits the latter’s essential generality.
This suggests, too, that narrowing down, or making more specific, the model of
narrative would not change this fundamental point. Even if a person-specific
diagnostic formulation were more closely modelled on what we might call a
‘story’, with the necessary dramatic components of that genre, still the basic
elements would be general concepts, applicable to more than one person and
hence not addressing the individualising intuition. The danger of pigeon-holing
would continue to exist. An individual might be subsumed under an appealing
narrative or story to which they do not fully fit.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Values-based practice<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Like person-centred medicine, values-based practice (VBP) is
another explicit attempt to complement to EBM (generalised from <i>medicine</i>
to <i>practice</i>), which aims to promote the role of patients’ and clients’
values alongside (evidence of) facts in healthcare decisions. In the original
and influential statement of VBP, in addition to arguing for the general
importance of values, Bill Fulford asserts the central importance of the
individual patient or client: ‘VBP’s ‘first call’ for information is the
perspective of the patient or patient group concerned in a given decision (the
‘patient-perspective’ principle)’ (Fulford 2001). Unlike conventional
bio-ethics, VBP is concerned with a full range of values and preferences that
inform patient choices rather than concentrating on ethical values. And, again
unlike most – though not all – approaches to medical ethics, Fulford places no
great importance on principles, contra eg Beauchamp and Childress’ Four
Principles approach (Beauchamp and Childress 2001).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On Fulford’s account, further, values are subjective. Value
judgements are the preferences of individuals rather than answering to anything
objective. The result is an essentially <i>subjectivist</i> account of values
in healthcare decisions. The idea of a correct medical decision is replaced by
proper deliberative procedure. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">In VBP, conflicts of values are resolved
primarily, not by reference to a rule prescribing a “right” outcome, but by processes
designed to support a balance of legitimately different perspectives (the “multi-perspective”
principle). (Fulford 2001: 206)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the context of a contrast between the particular and the
general, Fulfordian VBP suggests a complementary contrast between subjective
and objective. Could this be used to explain a difference between idiographic
and nomothetic?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a prima facie problem with this idea, however. A
subjectivist version of VBP is susceptible to an objection from circularity. This
can be illustrated by asking: what is the status of the claim that: in VBP conflicts
of values are resolved primarily, not by reference to a rule prescribing a ‘right’
outcome, but by processes designed to support a balance of legitimately different
perspectives? Note, first, that although Fulford says in the quotation above that
conflicts of values ‘<i>are</i> resolved…’ this is in the context of Values Based
Practice. So it should be read as saying: conflicts of values <i>should</i> be resolved by processes designed
to support a balance of legitimately different perspectives. But now we can ask,
why should they? (It may be an analytic truth that they are within Values Based
Practice, but we are invited to <i>adopt</i> this approach.) <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The worry, now, is that this seems to be a value of a different
order from the values that should be put through the right process of balancing
views. It seems to be a higher order value, inconsistent with Values Based Practice’s
own approach. This then suggests a dilemma for radical VBP. It can either address
the question of why we should value values in the way it suggests, but at the cost
of violating its own principles, or it can attempt no such question, in which case
it lacks the prescriptive force that gives it teeth (Thornton 2011, 2014).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The alternative favours an objective understanding of the
subject matter of value judgements and hence a particularist, rather than a
subjectivist, opposition to principlism (Dancy 1993). That leaves a different
account of VBP’s account of the role of values. Although not governed by
general principles, values are objective, albeit situation specific features of
the world. Thus, VBP adds an emphasis on getting the values of a patient or
service user <i>right</i> along with the biomedical facts. This is a genuine
and important addition to the generalist underpinnings of EBM. But again, while
a patient’s situation may be unique, the concepts used to describe it in both
factual <i>and evaluative</i> terms are general. And hence the individualising
intuition is again not met. Even acknowledging the general idea that
psychiatric categories are value-laden as well as factual does not make them
essentially tailored to the individual. The risk of pigeon-holing remains.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The biopsychosocial model<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">George Engel’s biopsychosocial model of healthcare shares with the
more recent World Psychiatric Association’s comprehensive model of diagnosis
the aim of a fuller picture of diagnosis and healthcare (Engel 1977). Drawing
on some of the same historical forebears as PCM – some proponents of which
explicitly draw on the biopsychosocial model in return – the biopsychosocial
model is explicitly aimed at augmenting, though still including, the biomedical
model. Its key metaphysical idea is that nature comprises a hierarchy of
levels: from the subatomic to the societal. The biopsychosocial model augments
the biomedical model by adding in factors from higher up the hierarchy. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">To provide a basis for understanding
the determinants of disease and arriving at rational treatments and patterns of
health care, a medical model must also take into account the patient, the
social context in which he lives, and the complimentary system devised by
society to deal with the disruptive effect of illness, that is, the physician
role and the health care system. This requires a biopsychosocial model. (Engel 1977).
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The biopsychosocial model explicitly aims to accommodate a
person-level account alongside the bio-medical underpinnings of disease
diagnosis. Might it, by that very aim, also accommodate idiographic understanding?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The problem is that merely adding higher levels of organisation to
basic levels of physics, chemistry and biology does little to address the
underlying concerns that motivated the quest for idiographic understanding in
the first place. Merely adding higher levels does nothing to address a concern
about the use of general descriptions and the concern of a connection to pigeon-holing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Idiographic as an interest<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In this final section, I will set out a different response to the ‘individualising
intuition’ drawing on incidental clues found in Windelband and his student Heinrich
Rickert. In his rectoral address, Windelband comments:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">[T]he more we strive for
knowledge of the concept and the law, the more we are obliged to pass over,
forget, and abandon the singular fact as such. We can see this disposition in
the characteristically modern attempt ‘to make history into a natural science’
the project of the so-called positivist philosophy of history… <span lang="EN-US">In opposition to this standpoint, it
is necessary to insist upon the following: every interest and judgment, every ascription
of human value is based upon the singular and the unique... Our sense of values
and all of our axiological sentiments are grounded in the uniqueness and incomparability
of their object.</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">(Windelband 1980: 181-2)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This passage suggests a contentious connection between values
and uniqueness. It is contentious in both directions. With respect to the
implication from values to uniqueness, Kant’s<span lang="EN-US"> Categorical
Imperative, for example, implies that love of the good has an essential
generality. But the implication from uniqueness to values is also unclear.
This, however, is the focus of Rickert’s general account of the relation
between and contrast of natural and historical science in his </span><i>The
Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science</i><span lang="EN-US"> (Rickert 1986). I will briefly outline his broad methodological
picture.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rickert argues that, because concepts are general, they
abstract away from the concrete details of the particular, individual and perceptual
aspects of reality. This is the <i>limit</i> of generalised scientific
conceptualisation, in the sense of what it <i>cannot</i> represent. Given that,
at least according to our experience of it, reality is infinite in extent and
infinitely complex or subdividable, the only way for concept formation
following this generalising strategy to be possible is to look for abstract
generalities and away from the perceptual and the real. There is thus a gap
between a generalised conceptual account of the world and the world itself.
This is called the ‘hiatus irrationalis’ in post-Kantian philosophy. It is an
hiatus because the conceptual cannot capture <i>every</i> aspect of reality and
it is irrational because it is only by being subsumed under concepts that we
can have a rational understanding of reality. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The move to a generalised scientific account moves away from
the real, individual and particular towards the general and conceptual. And
hence generalised scientific concepts are emptied of their perceptual character
and all its detail. Rickert points out that scientific laws have the form of
conditional statements: if one thing occurs then so will another. And thus he
asserts ‘It lies in the concept of law of nature that it has nothing to say
about what really occurs here or there, now or then, with a uniqueness and an
individuality that cannot be repeated.’ (ibid: 41)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Against the potential objection that the practical
application of natural science to make specific predictions shows it deals with
individuals, Rickert argues.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">[T]he fact that we calculate the
real in advance does not imply that the concepts of natural science comprehend
its total contents… It is not a question of grasping individual and perceptual
realities in their individuality and concrete actuality. We are able to say
only that in the future, an object will appear that can be subsumed as a case
under this or that general concept. But this does not give us knowledge of the
individuality and concrete actuality of future objects. Should we be interested
in this sort of knowledge, we are always obliged to wait until the objects are
really at hand. (ibid: 42)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Given the hiatus irrationalis between abstract concepts and
reality, generalised science cannot <i>reproduce</i> reality. It aims instead
at <i>valid</i> judgement. The truth of a judgement, its validity, is distinct
from a resemblance or reproduction. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">The concepts of the natural
sciences are true, not because they reproduce reality as it actually exists but
because they represent what holds <i>validly</i> for reality. (ibid: 44)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But because science does not copy reality, it opens up the
possibility of more than one relation between concepts and reality. The limit
case of generalised natural science suggests one such alternative (in fact, the
only other one). One can try to capture the <i>individuality</i> of the
concrete, real, perceptual rather than the general. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">There is a representation of
reality that proceeds not by generalising but by individualising, a
representation that is therefore able to satisfy the interest in the unique,
individual event itself. (ibid: 51)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">[T]he science of the unique and
the individual is necessarily the science of the <i>event</i> that has occurred
in the past… Every account of reality itself, every account that on the basis
of the foregoing reasons, concerns the unique, individual event that takes
place at a specific point in space and time, we call <i>history</i>. (ibid:
47-8)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But as Rickert emphasises, the arguments concerning the gap
between concepts and reality apply just as much to history as to natural
science.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">History too, insofar as it is a
science, can produce only a <i>conception</i> of reality based on a specific
logical <i>perspective</i>. As a result, the immediacy of reality is
necessarily destroyed, but that consideration does not alter the legitimacy of
this <i>point of departure</i> for a logical investigation. (ibid: 53)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hence he owes an account of the principles of concept
formation that govern history analogously with the abstraction and framing of
laws that governs the natural sciences. It turns out, however, that the
question he answers is more specific. It is how historical subjects are <i>selected</i>
rather than the nature of historical concepts. Subjects are selected because,
in addition to being specific individuals (of which there are too many!), they
are specific individuals of value. This resembles the quotation from Windelband
above which highlights a connection between what we value and uniqueness. Rickert
argues that history is concerned with ‘in-dividuals’ not just individuals. He
offers a lengthy analysis of the nature of the values in play but given that it
does not, after all, address a distinction in kind between an approach to generalities
and individuals it is not relevant here. Of the concepts actually deployed in
historical accounts, Ricket concedes that they are <i>general</i> and he merely
qualifies the scope of the generality compared to the natural sciences.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Even though many, perhaps even
most, historical concepts have a <i>general</i> content in the sense that they
comprehend what is common to a plurality of individual realities, in the
historical nexus of a unique developmental sequence this generality is always
considered as something relatively specific and individual. (ibid: 63)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In other words, despite the philosophical framework he
offers, Rickert does not provide a conceptual distinction between generalising
and individualising accounts. Both lie on the conceptual side of the hiatus
irrationalis and both deploy general concepts. In that respect, he is no more
successful than Windelband in suggesting how the individualising intuition is
to be met.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Despite that, one summarising passage in <i>The Limits of
Concept Formation in Natural Science</i> suggests a clue.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">There is a profusion of things
and events that <b>interest</b> us not only because of their relationship to a
general law or a system of general concepts but also because their
distinctiveness, uniqueness, and individuality are significant to us. Wherever
this <b>interest</b> in reality is present, we can do nothing with natural
scientific concept formation. (ibid: 46 bold added)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Combining this with the suggestion from Windelband – that ‘every ascription of human value is
based upon the singular and the unique’ – this suggests that the way to think
about the individualising intuition is not that it requires a specific form of
idiographic understanding or judgement, a specific conceptualisation. Rather it
reflects an interest in individuals that might be met in any number of ways. It
is<span class="s1"> not a novel form of judgement or intelligibility but rather is the
nature of interest an inquiry takes in its subject matter. In some cases, one
is interested in individuals because they are instances of generalities. In
others, the interest is in them as individuals (Thornton 2019). </span><span class="s1"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="s1">What is the nature of this interest? One
element is suggested in an earlier quotation from Rickert: ‘</span>Should
we be interested in this sort of knowledge [knowledge of the individuality and
concrete actuality of future objects], we are always obliged to wait until the
objects are really at hand.’ This suggests that one mark of an interest in an
individual is that the referential element of thoughts about them is fixed by
singular or object-dependent component of the thought. The actual existence of
an object is necessary to be able to think singular, as opposed to descriptive
thoughts, about them. But singular thought is not <i>sufficient</i> for an individualising
interest because one may also have singular thoughts about objects in which one
has an interest merely because they are instances of a generality. Further, one
may think of an object via a descriptive thought even if one has an
individualising interest. Thus the nature of the interest is not determined by
the logic of the thought even though the <i>possibility</i> of singularity is a
necessary component.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Construing the idiographic as a specific form of interest, rather
than a sui generis form of understanding, is liberating. It removes the need to
try to formulate a novel form of concept especially tailored for the individual.
Any kind of concept may, in the right context, serve the interest of shedding
light on an individual. But it also helps contextualise the different
approaches to healthcare discussed earlier in this chapter. The call for
diagnostic formulations in addition to criteriological diagnoses, person
centred medicine, the stress on personal narratives, values based practice and
the bio-psycho-social model are all motivated by an interest in individuals.
Each stresses different conceptual structures that might help in this but all
are expressions of the same guiding concern. In response to the worry that
generalities may, contingently, obscure the proper subject matter of
healthcare, each of these concerns attempts to place the individual back at the
centre of healthcare. That is the contemporary relevance of the idiographic,
construed not as a form of judgement but as a value.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>References</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">American Psychiatric Association (2013) <i>Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition
(DSM-5)</i>, Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Beauchamp, T.L. and Childress, J.F. (2001) <i>Principles of
Biomedical Ethics,</i> Oxford: <span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">Oxford
University Press</span> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dancy, J. (1993) <i>Moral Reasons</i>, Oxford: Blackwell <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Engel, G.L. (1977) ‘The need for a new medical model: a
challenge for biomedicine’ <i>Science.</i> 196:
pp. 129-36<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">Evans, G. (1980) <i>Varieties
of Reference</i>, Oxford: Oxford University Press</span> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fulford, K.W.M., (2001)
‘Ten Principles of Values-Based Medicine’ In <i>The Philosophy of Psychiatry: A Companion</i>, ed. J. Radden. New York:
Oxford University Press <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hempel,
C.G. (1965) <i>Aspects
of Scientific explanation</i>.
London: Free Press.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">IDGA Workgroup, WPA (2003) ‘<span lang="EN-US">IGDA 8: Idiographic (personalised) diagnostic formulation’
<i>British Journal of Psychiatry</i>, 18 (suppl
45): 55-7<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jaspers, K. (1974) ‘Causal and “Meaningful” Connections between
Life History and Psychosis’, trans. by J.Hoenig, in S.R.Hirsch and M.Shepherd. in
Hirsch, S.R., and M. Shepherd, <i>Themes and
Variations in European Psychiatry</i>, Bristol: Wright: 80-93<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Jaspers, K.
(1997) <i>General psychopathology</i>,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">McDowell, J. (1994) <i>Mind
and World</i>, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press</span> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rickert, H. (1986) <i>The Limits of Concept Formation in
Natural Science: A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences</i> Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sellars, W. (1997) <i>Empiricism
and the Philosophy of Mind</i>, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thornton, T. (2008a) ‘Does understanding individuals require
idiographic judgement?’ <em><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience </span></em><span lang="EN-US">258 Suppl 5:104–109</span><em><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thornton, T. (2008b) ‘Should comprehensive diagnosis include
idiographic understanding?’ <i>Medicine, Healthcare
and Philosophy</i> 11: 293-302<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thornton, T. (2010) ‘Narrative rather than idiographic approaches
as counterpart to the nomothetic approach to assessment’ <em><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Psychopathology</span></em>
16: 284-291<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thornton, T. (2011) ‘Radical liberal values based
practice<span style="background: white;">’ </span><i>Journal
of Evaluation in Clinical Practice </i>17: 988-91<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thornton, T. (2014) ‘Values Based Practice and
authoritarianism’ for Loughlin, M. (ed) <i>Debates in Values-based Practice:
arguments for and against</i>, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press pp50-61<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thornton, T. (2019) ‘Values and the Singular Aims of
Idiographic Inquiry’ in De Luca Picione, R., Nedergaard, J., Freda, M.F. and Salvatore,
S. (eds.) <i>Idiographic Approach to Health</i>,
Charlotte, NC Information Age Publishing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Travis, C. (2006) <i>Thought’s Footing</i> Oxford: Oxford
University Press<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Windelband, W. (1980) ‘History and natural science’ <i>History and Theory & Psychology</i> 19:
169-85.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">World Health Organization (1992). <i>The ICD- 10
Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders</i></p><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-73775160195567801052021-06-21T15:11:00.008+01:002021-06-22T16:00:26.702+01:00Postscript on Annalis Coliva’s book on Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AI8xha7tpGg/YNCcvLVT-zI/AAAAAAAAqHQ/Yok1jtDJxbIBoFt8qENyqWYjWLRzFLucACLcBGAsYHQ/s225/Annalis%2BColiva.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AI8xha7tpGg/YNCcvLVT-zI/AAAAAAAAqHQ/Yok1jtDJxbIBoFt8qENyqWYjWLRzFLucACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Annalis%2BColiva.jpg" /></a></div>I finished Annalis Coliva’s book on <i>Moore and Wittgenstein:
Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense </i>(2010) but I was a little disappointed.
After the care with which she set out Moore’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical
discussions, it was as though she just did not care so much about her own. In
the introduction there was some discussion about being an historian of
philosophy as well as a philosopher. Perhaps in this book that was where the
interest lay. (I’ve also been reading but not commented on her book on extended
rationality. That is delightfully philosophical but just not what I need at the
moment.) I think, however, that her own view is expressed by endorsing
summaries of Wittgenstein often earlier in the book.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The one thing I wanted was a careful account of hinges on
her view. Unlike the Norman Malcolm <a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2021/06/norman-malcolms-wittgenstein-relation.html" target="_blank">paper</a> I’ve just re-read, Coliva plays down the merely animal
certainty of hinges and plays up the idea that hinges are propositions, albeit
set against a background of merely animal certainty. So she contrasts with Daniele
Moyal Sharrock’s non-propositional and ineffabilist view, too. She connects both
these rejected views at the start of the book thus:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">Moreover, as to our attitude with
respect to them, if we held the <i>ineffabilist </i>conception of hinges,
whereby, failing to be propositions, they could neither be said, nor made the
object of any propositional attitude, our certainty with respect to them would
have to be thought of as non- propositional, non-conceptual and therefore of a
merely ‘animal’ kind. (ibid: 9)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The fullest account of her own position starts from this
rejection. Coliva takes hinges to be propositions, to be or to contain conceptual contents. A key claim is that this does not require that we stand in an <i>epistemic
</i>relation to them. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Finally, it remains to characterize
our relationship to these propositions, whose role is that of norms. As Moyal-Sharrock
and other interpreters have emphasized, it is thoroughly <i>non epistemic </i>and
thus unlike belief, knowledge or even psychological certainty, for
Wittgenstein. What they have failed to notice, in my view, however, is that
this doesn’t entail, nor supports the view that it is animal or instinctual,
and hence utterly non-propositional. After all, it has propositions – albeit
of a normative kind – as its objects. So, what kind of propositional attitude may
it be? I think an analogy would be useful here. Think of our rules of conduct,
for example, we ought to stop at traffic lights when red. In fact we can and do
say that we <i>accept </i>such a norm. That is to say, we behave in accord with
it and would either reproach those who don’t, or accept to be reproached
ourselves if we didn’t. Furthermore, we teach our children to obey it. This <i>pragmatic
</i>sense of accepting a proposition whose nature is normative, to be
contrasted with an epistemic sense of accepting empirical propositions for
which we don’t have (enough) evidence, and with respect to which it would make
utterly no sense to talk of epistemic evidence as it has <i>norms </i>as its
objects, is, I submit, what Wittgenstein is alluding to when he talks of
certainty with respect to hinges <i>qua </i>hinge-<i>propositions</i>. Now, the
interesting aspect of our acceptance of hinges is that while being a pro-attitude, it is itself <i>constitutive of epistemic rationality</i>, and not
merely a <i>pragmatist </i>acceptance due to an evaluation of its expected
practical utility. (ibid: 174)<br />
Yet, this pragmatic acceptance of rules tallies with many of Wittgenstein’s
remarks which allude to our certainty as displayed in our way of acting. In
particular, to acknowledge this sense of ‘accepting’ allows us not to go all
the way down the path of mere ‘animal certainty’ and is compatible with saying
that we accept, often implicitly and as a result of our upbringing, norms both
of language and of evidential significance, and ‘instinctively’ behave in
conformity with them, in ways which show no doubt. It must be stressed,
moreover, that such an instinctive behaviour is not the one of the animal, but
that of the <i>human </i>animal. That is to say, of the creature who has been drilled
and taught to use language and to take part in our various epistemic practices
and is thus already fully conceptual and a competent epistemic agent. If, then,
there is still room for instinct here, it is one concerning our so- called
second nature, not our merely first and animal one. (ibid: 174-5)</span><br />
So, ‘animal certainty’ is really not the focus of <i>On Certainty</i>, though
it is a precondition for being drilled to take part in our various language
games. What <i>On Certainty</i> centres on are rather those propositions which,
as a result of our upbringing within a community that shares a language and a
form of life, we can reflectively identify as being exempt from verification
and control as well as from doubt. This makes them play the role of norms,
either of language or of evidential significance. Moreover, with respect to
them, we do practically (as opposed to epistemically) accept them – that is to
say, we behave in accord with them, in ways which know no doubt – where our
doing so is, in its turn, constitutive of epistemic rationality. (ibid: 175)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So the picture is one of a background of animal certainty upon
which, through education and development of a McDowellian second nature, conceptually
articulated propositional certainties can be built. These are thus the object
of propositional attitudes though not <i>epistemic </i>propositional attitudes. Various
questions arise such as the nature of the attitude and how the hinges’
propositionality is realised.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">With respect to the former. in the passages just quoted, Coliva
sketches an initial analogy between hinges and <i>pragmatic acceptance</i>. But
she adds that the relevant attitude to hinges is not merely a pragmatist<i> </i>acceptance
- due to an evaluation of its expected practical utility - but is rather <i>constitutive
</i>of epistemic rationality. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So what is the limited positive aspect of the analogy? We behave
in <i>accord </i>with pragmatic norms and also with hinges and would reproach those
who don’t. But the hinges also play a non-contingent role in the <i>constitution </i>of rationality. What is this role? I’m not sure. But it seems to
have something to do with using – if that is the right verb – the propositional
hinges for normative rather than descriptive purposes. We instruct people using hinges and we accept them as the
normative standards that establish the epistemic language game, I think.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">By contrast, by defending the view
that hinges are propositions, though normative rather than descriptive in
nature, and that our certainty with respect to them is a kind of acceptance
which displays itself in our acting in accord with them, we make both
certainties and certainty with respect to them effable. Of course, I think
Moyal-Sharrock is right to claim that when we utter hinges <i>qua </i>hinges we
mostly do so with heuristic purposes in mind of the kind she correctly
identifies. Yet, by acknowledging their propositionality hinges become indeed
sayable <i>as such </i>– that is to say, as norms. (ibid: 177)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The second comment – about when we <i>utter</i> hinges qua<i> </i>hinges
– connects a heuristic purpose, which I think Coliva accepts, with the
propositionality and hence sayability of hinges as such. Utterances can have propositional contents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Earlier she expresses this thus:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">On the contrary, I hold the view that
while failing at bipolarity, they are still propositions, albeit with a normative
function, rather than a descriptive one, and that we do indeed express them on
various occasions: either to teach them to someone who ignored them or to
remind someone of them were they to violate them, as philosophers such as Moore
and a sceptic do. Contrary to other framework interpreters, most notably Moyal-Sharrock,
I do think that at least the former context in which hinges are actually said
is a genuine language game, by Wittgensteinian lights. (ibid: 10)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So the normative use is connected to heuristic purposes and is part of a genuine language game, not a misfiring piece of nonsense. That
gives us one place for hinges: in instructing people how to play the game of
giving and asking for reasons, which is based on certainties. The proposition is the content of the instructional utterance. But what is our attitude
to them when they take a role in propositional attitudes </span>which display themselves in our <i>acting </i>in accord with them? It seems: pragmatic acceptance. But that seems odd. It seems prima facie odd to model the certainty of hinges on mere pragmatic acceptance.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Another line of thought may help. Coliva contrasts her view with
Moore’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">when taken in those very circumstances</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, Moore’s
propositions don’t have an empirical role, but a normative one. In the twofold
sense that they are both <i>linguistically </i>paradigmatic judgements – that
is to say, judgements that must be agreed on if the meaning of the words in
them is to be determined – and <i>epistemically </i>paradigmatic ones. That is
to say, judgements that can’t be called into question on the basis of contrary
evidence, for they must stay put – however in context that might be – in order
for a subject to be in a position rationally to gather any kind of evidence for
other, genuinely empirical propositions. (ibid: 80)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The first part of this seems to characterise an instructive use of an utterance
rather than a propositional attitude. (T</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">here is a second aspect reflected by the phrase </span><i>epistemically </i>paradigmatic to which I'll return.) But the instructive use looks to be
meta-linguistic. It’s something like: call this! a ‘hand’, linking mention of a
word type and a demonstrative. The related propositional attitude would seem to
be an attitude to the connection between the look of a hand and the word ‘hand’.
But now, surely the right attitude is knowledge? I <i>know</i> the meaning of
the word ‘hand’. I <i>know </i>that this is called a ‘hand’. But perhaps this is not enough because pragmatically accepting a norm here suggests not only knowing the standrd meaning or use of ‘hand’ in English but deciding to bind oneself to that norm. I'll return to this shortly.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Coliva, however, suggests that things run deeper than either knowledge of meaning or adoption of a norm by quoting
a famous paragraph from the <i>Investigations</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If language is to be a means of
communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer
as this may sound) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do
so. – It is one thing to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain
and state results of measurement. But what we call ‘measuring’ is partly
determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement. (PI §242)</span><span dir="RTL" lang="HE" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HE; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I think that this gives content the idea that judgements about
instances of hands play a role in <i>underpinning </i>the meta-linguistic point. (I
also think that this links to the saying-showing distinction.) For Coliva, the
fact that we do just judge in accord with the normative standard governing ‘hand’
is part of the logic of judgement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">To <i>judge </i>thus-and-so, in
certain circumstances, is said, in OC, to be part of ‘our <i>method </i>of
doubt and enquiry’. Now, everything which is part of method does in fact belong
to ‘grammar’ and ‘logic’ too, in the extended, not merely linguistic sense that
those terms came to have for Wittgenstein at the time of <i>On Certainty</i>.
To judge that there is a hand in the circumstances of Moore’s proof therefore belongs
to the logic of our epistemic practices because it is what must stand fast if
we want to test other things – for example, the reliability of our senses –
which we do in turn need to trust in order to go about forming specific
empirical judgements in circumstances where it <i>is </i>an open question
whether what we see in front of us is really a hand. So, that <i>judgement </i>is
itself part of logic and therefore comes to have a normative role, rather than
a genuinely empirical one. (ibid: 81-2) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I imagine a case in which one uses one’s hand to estimate
the size of a spider – “It was as big as this hand!” – taking for granted the
identity of the hand. But now I’m unsure about the nature of the propositional
attitude. The hand, by contrast with the spider, is not an object of scrutiny.
But still it seems bizarre to think of our attitude as being analogous to a
pragmatic attitude, such as agreeing to stop at red traffic lights. We might take that towards the metalinguistic fact that we
call hands ‘hands’ in English. Thus, I think we know and additionally and distinctly endorse as a practice
for ourselves for successful communicative intent. As well as knowing that ‘hand’ means hand in English, we might also agree to be bound by the norm of using ‘hand’ in just this way for pragmatic reasons. We can also make sense of adopting a different policy. </p><p class="MsoNormal">But what of the unreflective,
animal-based but second nature, attitude towards this thing on the end of my
arm being a hand? Although I may adopt a policy of <i>speaking </i>in accord with English norms, it does not seem that the prior recognition of my hand as a hand - or recognising it as the same thing over time - is a matter of policy. I don’t just ‘accept’ that. No other policy seems available. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Instead it seems to be forced on one by an appreciation of one’s predicament. Other things may then follow such as the use of hands as comparison with spiders, for example, or the decision to follow regular English usage in their labelling. But we seem to be passive in the face of acknowledging what the world shows us. Why is it not simply <i>knowledge</i>?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-82897638511561516562021-06-15T15:57:00.004+01:002021-06-15T16:03:17.631+01:00Ontological and Epistemological Bases of Person Centered Medicine<p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vl37u-ngf_M/YMjBJJomoZI/AAAAAAAAqGY/Nvd5N4UyDmoFhBSoq-16Fp7s0XkLZkDgACLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/gettyimages-1208843113-1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1012" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vl37u-ngf_M/YMjBJJomoZI/AAAAAAAAqGY/Nvd5N4UyDmoFhBSoq-16Fp7s0XkLZkDgACLcBGAsYHQ/w198-h200/gettyimages-1208843113-1024x1024.jpg" width="198" /></a></b></div><b>Abstract</b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Person Centred Medicine is a substantial and contentious
view of healthcare that carries both ontological and epistemological
presuppositions. This chapter examines two key aspects: that the person is a
central, basic irreducible element in ontology and that person-level knowledge
is both important and possible. Some reasons for holding both of these are sketched.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>10 key words</b> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">epistemology, normativity, ontology,
persons, reductionism, rationality, self, space
of reasons<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>Introduction<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">The precise nature of Person Centered Medicine (PCM) is
contested. What are its implicit contrasts? Person versus patient or person
versus sub-personal body part, for example? What are its essential features?
Does it presuppose a specific set of person-level <i>values</i>? Such potential
choices and conflicting claims, addressed in other chapters of this book, have
consequences for articulating the bases of PCM.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">‘Base’ itself suggests two meanings. It may mean the explicit
justification or rationale for advancing PCM. Here, I offer a more minimal
reading and leave the main work of justification for other chapters. I take the
‘bases’ of PCM to be its presuppositions: specifically, the kinds of
ontological and epistemological claims it <i>presupposes</i> to be true. As
will become clearer, however, this does offer some partial account of its
rationale, too.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">I assume that, however its precise nature is articulated,
PCM assumes the following broad claims. Ontologically, the level of the person
is an irreducible and significant feature of ontology and a proper focus for
healthcare. Epistemologically, not only is knowledge of the human person (human
beings, people) possible and significant in healthcare, there are also
irreducible forms of person-level knowledge which are important to healthcare.
A commitment to PCM is thus a substantive commitment to ontological and
epistemological claims. I will examine these commitments in turn.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>Objectives<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">My aim is to
clarify the implicit conceptual or philosophical commitments (in ontology and
epistemology) of subscribing to PCM. I take it as a premiss that to subscribe
to PCM is to assume the genuine existence of persons, for example. A fully
worked out account of that commitment might require a completely satisfactory
philosophical analysis of ‘person’ and refutation of all rival accounts. But
that is an unrealistic account of what is required to support PCM. In this
short chapter I will restrict myself to the sort of claims presupposed for PCM.
A full philosophical defence of PCM might be possible but would also require
narrowing down a precise specification of what PCM is. My aim is more modest
but therefore of broader application to a range of views of what PCM involves.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>Approaches
to fulfil the objectives and knowledge base #1: The <i>ontological</i>
presuppositions of PCM<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">At the very
least, PCM presupposes the existence of persons. Further, it assumes that the
‘level’ of the person is important and irreducible in healthcare. That is,
truths about persons are not reducible without loss to truths at a more basic
level, such as the biochemical functioning of the body and its parts. If such
truths were reducible, there would be no need to complement or contrast
conventional biomedical approaches with something distinct. PCM would be
subsumed by a biomedical view of healthcare.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">PCM need not
reject the importance of bio-medical medicine so much as complement it. A
proper knowledge of the functioning of bodily systems seems to be an essential
feature of anything recognisable as general <i>medicine</i> by contrast, for
example, with healthcare disciplines that focus solely on specific forms of
mental pathology or distress, such as psychotherapy. On the other hand, to
count as <i>person</i> centred, PCM must resist the claim that the concept of
the person reduces without loss into a set of component bodily systems.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Given the
success of modern science in explaining larger systems by decomposing them into
the behaviour of smaller scale, simpler systems, what would rationalise the
presupposition that the person is a basic feature of ontology and irreducible
to smaller scale biology?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">One once
influential answer – and a helpful illustration here – is provided by Cartesian
substance dualism. Descartes’ own account of the bulk of the natural world was
that of a mechanical ‘plenum’: a packed world of direct causal pushes and
pulls. Responding to the rise of mechanical natural philosophy – corresponding
with the rise of modern science – Descartes assumed that mechanical models
would apply very generally. At the same time, however, he exempted the mind
from this domain. His dualism divides the world into two realms of different
sorts of substance: res extensa – the domain of direct causal interaction
within a spatial realm – and res cogitans, the non-spatial mental realm. Despite
this distinction, the mental realm appears to be modelled on the mechanical
philosophy in one sense: mental states are free-standing states, acting as
though akin to causal factors [McDowell 1998a: 237-243]. This is one of the
features that makes accounting for everyday mental phenomena difficult: for
example, the capacity for thoughts to be relational rather than free-standing, <i>about</i>
things, to possess ‘intentionality [ibid: 242-3]. If thoughts are free standing
items in an inner realm, how can they be about anything, in the outer realm? Another
is the problem Descartes himself recognised of accounting for the apparent
interaction of the mental and extended realms. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">If we put
those objections to one side for the moment, however, Cartesian substance
dualism would provide a rationale for PCM by explaining one of its
presuppositions. Substance dualism implies that persons – possessors of both
mental and physical attributes – cannot be entirely made of extended matter.
The mental belongs to a distinct non-bodily realm. But subscription to what now
seems an outmoded approach to the mind would be a high price to pay for
subscribing to PCM. So if not that, why else might one take the concept of the person
to be irreducible?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">One lesson of
academic philosophy of mind since the 1970s is that there are many (apparently
or epistemically) possible models of the relation of mind and body [Fulford et
al 2006: 653]. At one end of a spectrum is substance dualism. At the other is
eliminativism: the view that there are no mental states because the mental is a
failed theory of the physical and should be eliminiated. Between are varieties
of forms of property dualism, more or less closely tethered by supervenience
(an asymmetric relation of dependence), and reductionist physicalism (the view
that the mental can be reduced without loss to physical descriptions). Thus, a
commitment to PCM requires a rejection of eliminativism and reductionist
physicalism but leaves open a variety of other ontological positions. But what
might motivate that choice however precisely it might be realised?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Within analytic
philosophy of mind, two main lines of argument have been stressed. One concerns
the irreducibility of the qualitative aspects of mental states and experiences:
their qualia. One such argument is Frank Jackson’s thought experiment concerning
Mary the neuroscientist, locked in a black and white room but knowing the full
physics and neurophysiology of colour vision [Jackson 1986]. Surely, runs the
line of thought, she learns something new when presented for the first time
with a red object? But if so, there is at least one fact to be learnt – what
red looks like to the conscious mind – that cannot be captured within physical
and neurophysiological theory. So reductionism of the mental to the physical is
false. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">A second line
of argument, associated with Donald Davidson, concerns the irreducibility of
the structure of rationality to mere lawlike relations between natural events
[Davidson 1980: 229-44]. On the twin assumptions that the mental is essentially
tied to rationality, and that rationality cannot be codified into any structure
of laws and hence captured in physical theory, then the mental is irreducible
to physical properties. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Such arguments
– or the premises of such arguments however precisely formalised: the appeal to
qualia or to rationality – supply plausible motivations for subscribing to a
view of the irreducibility of the mental to something physical of bodily. But that
is not yet to say that the notion of a person is specifically of importance. What
of the centrality of the person? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">There is a
line of thought in philosophy dating back to David Hume which would motivate
scepticism about its importance, even while conceding the importance of the
mental. Hume presents an argument that focuses on the nature of the <i>self</i>
as something mental able to unify (mental) experiences as the experiences of a
particular subject. Hume suggests that an introspective search for such a self,
as the subject of thoughts and experiences, yields nothing.<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt; text-align: left;">For my part, when I enter most
intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular
perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never
can observe anything but the perception. . . . If anyone, upon serious and
unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must
confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be
in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this
particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he
calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me. [Hume 1978:
252]</p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Hume’s final comment is clearly meant to be ironic.
Introspection, Hume suggests, reveals nothing that could stand in the sort of
relation to one’s mental states that a self is supposed to do. This leads him
to advocate a minimalist ‘bundle theory’ of mind. The self is identified simply
with the mental states encountered in introspection and not with an ego which
stands in some ownership relation to them. Philosophers since Hume have adopted
a variety of responses that concede the basic point. Daniel Dennett argues that
the self is an abstraction: a narrative structure of mental states. ‘A self is
also an abstract object, a theorist’s fiction.’ [Dennett 1992]. Others have
denied the existence of self in favour of underlying neurological structures [Hofstadter 2007; Metzinger 2003; Taylor 1999]</p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">There is,
however, a conflicting line of thought dating back to Kant that grants an
important basic status to the person. The philosopher Peter Strawson offers an
explicitly Kantian account [Strawson 1959, 1966]. To earn the right to the idea
that experiences are unified as the experiences of a particular subject (a
person), there has to be some way to specify or identify that subject. Without
some such criteria, the idea of a single subject is vacuous. But as Hume’s description
of introspection reveals, conscious experience does not yield any criteria to
identify a subject (or owner) for one’s experiences. It reveals only the
experiences themselves. From this, Hume concludes that there is no substantial
self. But there are criteria for the identification of a subject available
elsewhere: third-person criteria for the ascription of experiences to fellow
human beings on the basis of what they say and do. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Strawson
suggests that these can provide substance to the idea of a self even though
they are not appealed to in self-ascriptions of experiences. This is because, while
self-ascription of experiences is made without any appeal to these (or any
other) criteria to identify a subject, it is still made in accord with them. As
Strawson puts it, ‘The links between criterionless self-ascription and
empirical criteria of subject-identity are not in practice severed’ [Strawson
1966: 165]. Thus, it is because we are identifiable from a third person
perspective as embodied subjects located within the world that we can also
self-ascribe experiences without appeal to, but still in accord with, those
criteria. The third-person criteria substantiate the idea of a subject.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Strawson goes
on to argue that the person is a basic feature of ontology. Persons have,
essentially, both physical and mental predicates. It is this combination that underpins
the kind of subjective perspective to which Hume appeals but which cannot, by
itself, constitute a self. As the contemporary philosopher John McDowell puts
it:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt 36pt;">The alternative [to a purely mental construal
of the self as subject of experience] is to leave in place the idea that
continuity of “consciousness” constitutes awareness of an identity through
time, but reject the assumption that that fact needs to be provided for within
a self-contained conception of the continuity of “consciousness”. On the contrary,
we can say: continuous “consciousness” is intelligible (even “from within”)
only as a subjective angle on something that has more to it than the subjective
angle reveals, namely the career of an objective continuant with which the
subject of the continuous “consciousness” identifies itself. The subjective
angle does not contain within itself any analogue of keeping track of
something, but its content can nevertheless intelligibly involve a stable
continuing reference, of a first person kind; this is thanks to its being
situated in a wider context, which provides for an understanding that the
persisting referent is also a third person, something whose career is a
substantially traceable continuity in the objective world. [McDowell 1998b: 363]<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">I do not wish
to suggest, in this brief chapter, that a Kantian account of the nature of the
person and a Strawsonian justification of its ontologically basic status is a
necessary presupposition of PCM. But it provides a worked example of the kind
of account to which PCM is committed: to the existence and importance of
persons as a basic feature in ontology.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>Approaches
to fulfil the objectives and knowledge base #2: The <i>epistemological</i>
presuppositions of PCM<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Just as PCM
presupposes that the person is a proper part of ontology – an irreducible level
of description of the natural world – so it also carries epistemic
presuppositions. Centrally, it is possible to have <i>knowledge</i> of persons.
To clarify this point, think of the more normal English plural. It is possible
to have knowledge of <i>people</i>. Well of course it is! But a biomedical
perspective that explicitly rejected the principles of PCM would still claim
knowledge of the bodies, of their functions and dysfunctions, of people. Thus,
to arrive at a presupposition that marks PCM out as a distinct substantive and potentially
contentious approach, it is necessary to say something more. It is not just
that knowledge of persons is possible, for example, of their bodies, but that
knowledge of persons or people <i>as persons</i> is possible. What might be the
characteristic content of such person-specific knowledge?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">The previous
section, however, mentioned one way to substantiate just such a claim.
Descriptions of mental phenomena answer to a distinct constitutive principle
that ‘finds no echo in physical theory’: the Constitutive Ideal of Rationality
[Davidson 1980: 223]. To adopt a different metaphor: even without subscribing
to a dualism of <i>substances</i> (mental and physical), one might still
recognise a distinction between two <i>conceptual</i> spaces or modes of
intelligibility: the space of reasons and the realm of law [Sellars 1997]. The
former has application at the level of the person and captures a normative or
evaluative character in the assessment of reasons for belief or action. One of
the features that mark out persons or people from other objects of scientific
scrutiny is that people, unlike planets or atoms, act for reasons or motives or
to further goals or interests and they can be successful or fail in the
attempt. This introduces a normative dimension – a dimension of correctness or
incorrectness, good or bad – that is missing from basic physical sciences. Thus,
part of the way in which PCM earns the right to claim a <i>sui generis</i>
level of knowledge of persons <i>as persons</i> is to commit to the importance
and irreducibility of placing subjects in the ‘logical space of reasons’.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">This link
opens up connections to other areas often taken to be part of PCM when less minimally
approached. (Recall that this chapter has adopted a minimal approach to what
PCM requires in order to explore the central ontological and epistemological
presuppositions of <i>any</i> plausible view of PCM.) The space of reasons is
also the space of values. Thus, any version of PCM that argues for the moral
and ethical consequences or presuppositions of treating patients as persons
will have to trade in this space: the space of evaluating the Good and the
True.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">But while
sketching the logical space of knowledge of persons <i>as persons</i> helps show
the nature of the ambition for PCM it does not address one specific worry that,
while philosophically-influenced, can occur in reflective moments inspired by
everyday life. It is the worry that, desirable that knowledge of other people –
as persons – is, it is strictly impossible. One can never achieve good enough evidence
to justify claims about another’s mental life. Such is the worry. Here is a way
to seem – misleadingly! – to ground it. Consider again the Cartesian substance
dualist picture of the relation of mind and body. If mind and body occupy
different dimensions – the physically extended and the thinking – then it seems
that no form of perception based on causal receptivity in the physical realm can
yield awareness of other minds because minds are simply not in that realm. How
therefore is knowledge of others <i>as persons</i> so much as possible? Surely
one can never bridge the gap between one’s own experience of another person and
their actual thoughts and feelings? This worry then seems to float free of the
specifically Cartesian dualist background. Even if the mind is software running
on the hardware of brains – as philosophical functionalism claims – how is it
possible to infer from someone’s behaviour to their underlying software state?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">During the
last 30 years, there have been two dominant philosophical answers to this
question. One approach argues that such knowledge is akin to scientific theoretically
mediated knowledge of unobservable entities: ‘theory theory’ [<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Davies and
Stone 1995a]</span>. Its main rival starts from the idea of empathic
projection: one imaginatively places oneself in the position of the other and imagines
one’s thoughts and experiences: ‘simulation theory’ [<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Davies and Stone 1995b]</span>. It is
worth noting in practice how unsatisfactory either is to ground the idea that
one can ever have genuine <i>knowledge</i> of how another person – a patient or
service user or even a loved one, perhaps – is feeling. We do not seem to know
the theory presupposed by the former approach while the act of imagination
outlined by the second seems inadequate for <i>knowledge</i>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">PCM need
presuppose no particular account of how person-level knowledge of persons as
persons is possible. Its commitment is not to any specific explanation of <i>how</i>
but to the more generic claim <i>that</i> it is possible. However, it is worth
noting that the very idea that there is a problem to be solved may be more
philosophical – albeit longstanding – artefact than common sense. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">A helpful alternative
view stems from the same account of the basic role of persons highlighted in
the previous section which is both essentially mental and physical. If one
starts from that perspective, rather than the dualistic separation of mind and
body, then there is no need to deny the common-sense idea that human minds can <i>express</i>
themselves in human behaviour and hence be known by others through that
expressive behaviour. This contrasts with the ‘alienated’ conception of our
relation to others that underpins a Cartesian view of human bodies where bodies
are brute machines at best merely controlled by minds that inhabit a different
dimension. On the non-Cartesian picture, one can have a form of <i>almost</i>
direct knowledge of another’s mental states. It is direct knowledge of the
expression of the mental state. As John McDowell argues, experience of other
people is not limited to their bare behaviour, with mentality hidden behind it.
The idea of almost direct knowledge can be applied:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6.0pt; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt 36pt;"><a name="ID131"></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">in at
least some cases of knowledge that someone else is in an “inner” state, on the
basis of experience of what he says and does. Here we might think of what is
directly available to experience in some such terms as “his giving expression
to his being in that ‘inner’ state”; this is something that, while not itself
actually being the “inner” state of affairs in question, nevertheless does not
fall short of it in the sense I explained. <a name="ID132"></a>(</span><a name="ID133"></a><span class="citation"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McDowell 1998a</span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">.: 387)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><a name="ID134"></a>Although one person’s inner states do not themselves fall within
the direct perceptual experience of another person (hence ‘almost’), the fact
that they express them can. This idea of expression is <a name="ID135"></a><i>not</i>
one that is consistent with the <a name="ID136"></a><i>absence</i> of the inner
state. So McDowell replaces an account in which all that is visible to an
observer is another person’s intrinsically brute or meaningless behaviour,
standing in need of further interpretation and hypothesis, with one in which
that behaviour is charged with meaning and expression. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">One way to
think about this alternative to the Cartesian picture is to think about how one
might describe another person’s smile. We naturally reach for apparently
epistemically risky and mind-presupposing words over the supposedly more basic
purely physical descriptions. A smile is relaxed, ecstatic, forced, brave etc.
Such descriptions are easier to offer than the purely geometric and non-mental
descriptions that the Cartesian picture of the relation of others’ bodies and
minds would suggest.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">This particular
philosophical ‘diagnosis’ of the implicit error behind the thought that it can
seem that direct person-level knowledge is impossible provides one rationale
for thinking that epistemological strand of PCM is fully justifiable. But it is
not necessary to accept this to subscribe to PCM. The epistemological mark of
PCM is merely that there is an available form of knowledge, couched at the
level of the person, that is a key component of healthcare alongside more basic
knowledge of bodily functions and dysfunctions.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>Practical
Implications<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">The practical
implications of adopting a PCM approach will be explored more directly in other
chapters of this book. The purpose of this conceptual and theoretical chapter
is to clarity the presuppositions and suggest the logical space for such a
distinctive view. Only if some things are ruled out by it does PCM have any
content. I have argued that what is ruled out is the idea that person-level
claims can be reduced without loss to lower level bio-medical claims and that
there is no distinctive person-level knowledge. I have also offered a brief
route map to escape the pessimistic thought that it is simply impossible to
have knowledge of other people’s mental states. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">But some
practical implications are immediately apparent. If person level knowledge
exists and is irreducible and assuming that it is important to healthcare (a
claim for which I have not offered argument here for reasons of space but is
apparent elsewhere in this book) then the pursuit of person level knowledge
requires the right kind of inquiring stance. Since the most obvious way to find
out how things stand with another person is to ask them, and to listen to what
they say, and to watch what they do, then these forms of inquiry must be
available in doctor-patient, or specialist-client, or practitioner-service user
relations.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>Discussion
and conclusions<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Person Centred Medicine is a substantial and contentious
view within the philosophy and practice of healthcare. The mark of its
substance is that it rules some things out. It is incompatible with some other
views of nature and hence healthcare. In this chapter, I have explored its main
broad presuppositions concerning ontology and epistemology. Its commitment to
the existence of the person as a basic and irreducible element within ontology
stands in opposition to views that deny that by, for example, promising to reduce
the concept of the person to more basic phenomena. Thus, it stands opposed to
various reductionist views. Its commitment to there being a form of person
level knowledge and it being achievable stands in opposition both to claims
that there is no such irreducible level or sceptical claims that it is
impossible to attain. Although advocates for PCM need not have a fully worked
out philosophy of the person or person-level knowledge, I have sketched the
nature of this sort of commitment and made some suggestions for how they might
be supported.<b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><b>References<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Davidson,
D. (1980) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Essays on Actions and Events</i>,
Oxford: Oxford University Press <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Davies, M. and Stone, T. (ed.) (1995a) <i>Folk Psychology: a guide
to the theory of mind debate</i>. Oxford: Blackwell.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Davies, M. and Stone, T. (ed.) (1995b) <i>Mental Simulation: evaluations
and applications</i>. Oxford: Blackwell. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Dennett, D. (1992) The self as a center of narrative gravity. In
Self and consciousness: multiple perspectives, ed. F. Kessel, P. Cole, and D.
Johnson. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Reprinted at URL:
cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000266/ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Fulford,
K.W.M., Thornton, T. and Graham, G. (2006) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oxford
Textbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry</i>, Oxford: Oxford University Press <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Hofstadter, D. (2007) <em><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I am a strange loop</span></em>. New York: Basic Books.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Hume, D. (1978)
A treatise of human nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Jackson,
F. (1986) ‘What Mary didn't know’ Journal of Philosophy 83:291-295<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McDowell,
J. (1985) Functionalism and anomalous monism. In Actions and events:
perspectives on the philosophy of Donald Davidson, ed. E. LePore and B. P.
McLaughlin. Oxford: Blackwell. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McDowell,
J. (1998a) Meaning knowledge and reality. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">McDowell,
J. (1998b) Mind value and reality. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Metzinger, T. (2003) <em><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Being no one – The self-model theory of subjectivity</span></em>.
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Sellars, <a name="ID5366"></a>W.<a name="ID5367"></a> (1997) <a name="ID5368"></a><i>Empiricism
and the Philosophy of Mind</i>. <a name="ID5369"></a>Cambridge, MA: <a name="ID5370"></a>Harvard University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Strawson,
P. F. (1959). Individuals. London: Methuen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Strawson,
P. F. (1966) The bounds of sense. London: Methuen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 6pt;">Taylor, J.G. (1999) <em><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The race for consciousness</span></em>. Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-45945955566399670802021-06-11T16:24:00.011+01:002021-07-10T11:46:32.065+01:00First thoughts on starting to read Annalis Coliva’s Moore and Wittgenstein <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-stE-qffYQnQ/YMN_7XmpRHI/AAAAAAAAqFg/wuvLe-vk7jQ_KCXeMpRPt_AYUJ8mDQwGACLcBGAsYHQ/s239/Coliva.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="153" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-stE-qffYQnQ/YMN_7XmpRHI/AAAAAAAAqFg/wuvLe-vk7jQ_KCXeMpRPt_AYUJ8mDQwGACLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Coliva.jpg" /></a></div>I’ve been reading Annalis Coliva’s excellent book on <i>Moore and
Wittgenstein:</i> <i>Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense</i> (2010). The
discussion of Moore in chapter 1 seems very helpful. In chapter 2, however, I’m
torn between admiring the clear exposition of Wittgenstein’s <i>On Certainty</i>
and a sneaking feeling that she subscribes to one aspect of the sort of thing I
used to say about <i>On Certainty</i> and now feel uncomfortable with. My hunch
is that she has a relaxed construal of knowledge which resembles something like a
true belief based on a good enough reason. Further, I think this is motivated
by focusing too much on the claim ‘I know’. Spotting that that is fallible –
one can claim to know when one does not know – she then locates the fallibility
too closely, I fear, with the state of knowledge itself rather than with its first
person self-ascription. Still I'm early in the book and may be quite wrong or, equally, later persuaded.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">For example, is the following merely a slip or is it significant?
First she quotes <i>On Certainty</i> and then picks up a line of thought. </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">According to Wittgenstein, here are some examples of the correct use
of ‘I know’:...</span></p></blockquote>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Someone with bad sight asks me: ‘do
you believe that the thing we can see there is a tree?’ I reply ‘I <i>know </i>it
is; I can see it clearly and am familiar with it’. – A: ‘Is N. N. at home?’ –
I: ‘I believe he is.’ – A: ‘Was he at home yesterday?’ – I: ‘Yesterday he was –
I know he was; I spoke to him.’ – A: ‘Do you know or only believe that this
part of the house was built on later than the rest?’ – I: ‘I <i>know </i>it is;
I got it from so and so’. (OC 483) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In these cases, then, one says ‘I
know’ and mentions how one knows [<i>das Grund</i>], or at least one can do so.
(OC 484) (Coliva 2010: 62)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A paragraph later she is able to offer the description and
conclusion she wants which runs:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;">[T]he fact that in general our
use of ‘to know’ in the first person present be made on the basis of grounds –
whatever they contextually happen to be – is a criterion for saying that that
use of ‘I know’ was meaningful though, perhaps, mistaken. Thus, if I had talked
to NN’s twin brother this would (probably) falsify the claim that NN was at
home and would (certainly) show that I did not know, but only believed to have
talked to him. My claim ‘I know that NN was at home yesterday’ would thus be false,
but my use of ‘I know’ would not be nonsensical. By contrast, if I claimed to
know that NN was at home yesterday but if I were unable to offer reasons in favour
of such a claim, that would show that I misused the expression ‘I know’. (ibid:
62-3)<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A condition on the ordinary use of ‘I know’ – she says – is that
one is able to offer grounds. But one may be in error, or merely not know, if, for example, the
grounds offered fail, for example if one has mistaken his twin brother for NN.
But the passage just before that gets her to this conclusion runs:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Let us consider the second of
Wittgenstein’s examples from the above mentioned quotation. The <i>fact that I
talked to NN yesterday</i> and offer it as my ground for saying that I know he
was at home is a criterion for the correct assertion ‘I know that…’. A
criterion is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for knowledge that <i>p</i>.
For, clearly, <i>I could have talked to NN’s twin brother, and NN could have
been at home while I had no conversation with him</i>. (ibid: 62 both italics
added)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Here Coliva seems to think that the <i>fact </i>that I talked to NN fails
to act as sufficient grounds for the claim to knowledge because – for all I
know, let’s assume - <i>I could have talked instead to NN’s twin brother.</i> That
possibility of error implies, she says, that actually talking to NN is merely a
<i>criterion </i>on the model of criteria where they are neither necessary nor sufficient
for knowledge. But with no other undermining circumstances described, why is (the
fact of) talking to NN at his home not sufficient for knowing him to have been
at home? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This seems to hint at a highest common factor of experience in which
one could never take in the fact of talking to NN – because it is possible to
confuse NN and his twin – and hence the invocation of that fact as grounds for a knowledge claim should be interpreted merely as a highest common factor analogue. Not the full fact as she actually states it but that merely under an interpretation of what it shares with talking to his twin brother: seeming to talk to NN (or his twin). (Of course, it does change things if his twin lives with NN and I know that I cannot tell them apart. In that case the fact of seeing NN rather than, as it happens and by luck, his twin cannot impress itself on me and hence my capacity for knowledge is undermined. But none of this has been specified.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This looks like the difficulty I’ve seen elsewhere of drawing
conclusions for knowledge from the fallibility of claims expressed via ‘I know…’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Here’s a longer passage a little later from pp74-6. Coliva here
follows Wittgenstein so my qualms may be with him rather than her. But she does
endorse the view that emerges. I will intersperse lengthy quotation with my
comments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Wittgenstein, as we saw in §2.2,
thinks that ‘the difference between the concept “knowing” and the concept of
“being certain” isn’t of any great importance at all’ except, however, ‘where
“I know” is meant to mean: I <i>can’t </i>be wrong’ (OC 8). When we say that we
are certain ‘we express complete conviction, the total absence of doubt, and
thereby we seek to convince other people. That is <i>subjective </i>certainty’
(OC 194, cf. 245, 415). But – asks Wittgenstein – ‘when is something <i>objectively
</i>certain?’ (ibid. my italics); and answers, ‘When a mistake is not possible’
(ibid.). That is to say, when the possibility of being mistaken is ‘<i>logically
</i>excluded’ (cf. ibid. my italics). (Coliva 2010: 74-5)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So knowing and being certain are not substantially different
<i>except </i>in this context though note that it is still explored via an ‘I know’
claim (rather than, eg., looking at when we might properly ascribe knowledge in the third person). When ‘I know’ is meant to mean: I cannot<i> </i>be wrong, then there is
a difference. It would be good to know what this is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Well when we say ‘I am certain’ that expresses, she says, complete
conviction, the total absence of doubt. So that sounds to be equivalent of
saying ‘I cannot be wrong’. So that sounds just the same as the use of ‘I know’
we’ve just had to mean the same thing: </span>I cannot<i> </i>be wrong. Hence I’m confused.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The passage from Wittgenstein continues with the distinction of
subjective and objective certainty. My hunch is that subjective certainty is a
status that applies to the claims ‘I know’ and ‘I am certain’ - both expressive of the
total absence of doubt - whether or not they are true. That is, one is
subjectively certain if one claims knowledge falsely. We might say: although Jones was certain, in his own mind, he turned out not to know and, in fact, to be quite wrong. (There is no equivalent: subjectively know, ie. falsely.) Objective certainty
applies to a combination of subjective certainty and the idea that mistake is actually not possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Given that subjective certainty did not deliver the promised distinction
between knowing and being certain, is the idea that a distinction enters only
with objective certainty? This would falsify the initial too wide claim but
understandably so. But if so it implies that Wittgenstein and Coliva hold that
knowledge is compatible with some possibility of being wrong: being right though one might have been wrong; being right though only by luck. But that seems to me
to undermine the very idea of knowledge. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Note that it is perfectly possible, as
above, that the claim ‘I know’ is false but here we seem to be talking about
knowledge itself not merely false claims to have it. </span>She continues:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">At another place, however, he writes, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">‘Knowledge’ and ‘certainty’ belong to
different <i>categories</i>. They are not two ‘mental states’ like, say
‘surmising’ and ‘being sure’ (…). What interests us now is not being sure but
knowledge. That is, we are interested in the fact that about certain empirical
propositions no doubt can exist if making judgments is to be possible at all.
Or again: I am inclined to believe that not everything that has the form of an empirical
proposition <i>is </i>one. (OC 308) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But, as we saw in §2.2, sometimes ‘I
am certain’ can occur in place of ‘I know’, and yet, Wittgenstein now says, ‘I
know’ doesn’t express a subjective conviction. (ibid: 75)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This is puzzling assuming - possibly utterly wrongly - my approach above. I’d like to say that ‘I
know’ <i>expresses </i>(it does not ensure) a (hence fallible) claim to <i>objective </i>certainty though we might – on the
suggestion above – ascribe to the person ‘subjective certainty’ should they
prove to be in error about the facts. Perhaps the latter could be flagged as <i>indicated</i>. The sincere claim <i>expresses </i>an objective claim about the world that may prove false and <i>indicates </i>that the speaker holds it with great conviction, which still holds even if they are wrong about the world. I am yet to see why this is helpful,
however.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This makes it puzzling to see how for
Wittgenstein ‘I am certain’ can express a subjective conviction and thus a
mental state. In the contexts in which ‘I know’ can be substituted by ‘I am
certain’, I suggest to interpret both these claims as in fact equivalent to the
following one: ‘for all I know, things are thus- and-so’. For this last
assertion makes clearer how my certainty is here a function of the information,
evidence and grounds <i>I </i>have in favour of a given hypothesis. This,
however, doesn’t guarantee that things are as I – with good right – claim them
to be. Thus, one can say that my certainty is subjective, as it is a function
of a subject’s state of information. (ibid: 75)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There seems to be something strange and very wrong about glossing the
sincere claims ‘I know’ or ‘I am certain’ as <i>for all I know, things are
thus-and-so.</i> If someone says that, then they ought to withdraw the claim ‘I
know’ or ‘I am certain. Unless it is an empty philosophical musing, ‘for all I know’
undermines the claim of either. Lots of sentences about cultural practice in
distant countries can follow my own use of ‘For all I know’ and none of them are then
knowledge (they would be mostly false, even).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This doesn’t mean that the claim ‘I am
certain’ would somehow be arbitrary and whimsical. Simply, my certainty doesn’t
exclude the possibility of error: I could have overlooked or misinterpreted some
evidence and wrongly taken it to support ‘p’; or else, I could fail to have
some decisive piece of evidence against it. (ibid: 75)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">To the contrary, I am inclined to say that the previous suggestion about </span>‘for all I know’ really does make the follow up claim ‘I am certain’ <i>arbitrary and whimsical</i>! It ought to be withdrawn immediately by a competent speaker. The rest of this seems, again, to ignore the difference between what is claimed and what might prove to be the case. ‘I know’ is fallible. Again, I suspect the problem comes from looking at first person rather than third person ascriptions.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So, we can make sense of Wittgenstein’s
claim that, in this case, one’s certainty would be subjective. Yet, can we also
make sense of his claim that it would then be a mental state? After all, it
won’t differ from knowledge and Wittgenstein, as we saw in §2.1, stressed the
fact that knowledge isn’t a mental state. He writes, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 72pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">One may for example call ‘mental
state’ what is expressed by tone of voice in speaking, by gestures etc. It
would thus be <i>possible </i>to speak of a mental state of conviction, and
that may be the same whether it is knowledge or false belief. (OC 42) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I think that the kind of certainty
Wittgenstein dubs ‘subjective’ isn’t itself a mental state, just as knowledge
isn’t, for him, but that it can be <i>accompanied </i>by a particular ‘mental
state of conviction’, that can be manifested in the tone of voice and in one’s
manners. That there be such aspects of ‘tone’ and that there be also a
particular mental state of conviction – a special feeling, as it were – is
entirely plausible, from a phenomenological point of view. This, however,
doesn’t exclude the possibility of error. I may feel as certain as ever of
having taken my keys this morning when I left home, and yet find out later that
I didn’t. A particular feeling is not a sufficient condition (nor a necessary
one) for the truth of the hypothesis one claims to be certain about, as it could
occur both when one really knows that <i>p </i>and ‘p’ is thus the case and
when one doesn’t know it because in fact ‘p’ isn’t the case. So one’s claim to
be (subjectively) certain and its accompanying feelings of total conviction
don’t guarantee the impossibility of being mistaken. (ibid: 75-6)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This seems to be making unnecessarily heavy weather of the fact
that claims to know are fallible. But the suggestion somehow lurking here that one might self ascribe knowledge – in an ‘I know’ claim – via introspection of
feelings of certainty seems bizarre. She says: </span>A particular feeling is not a sufficient condition (nor a necessary one) for the truth of the hypothesis one claims to be certain about. Who knew? But without that bizarre idea, I am not sure what this
paragraph claims. Note that one would not normally claim to be <i>subjectively </i>certain unless, perhaps, one realises that one has taken a drug and has become unreliable. One might, perhaps, say: I am weirdly subjectively certain about facts I couldn't possibly know so please ignore me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Wittgenstein, therefore, isn’t
interested in this kind of certainty <i>[TT: a good thing too since it seems silly]</i>, nor, in this case, in the use of ‘I know’
within our usual language games, where it can be substituted by ‘I am
certain/sure’. Rather, he wishes to clarify that peculiar use of ‘I know’ which
is a synonym of ‘I can’t be wrong’ and which expresses <i>objective </i>certainty
(OC 569). (ibid: 76)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But didn’t we have this assimilation earlier applied to <i>subjective</i>
certainty? Perhaps not if the conjunction is played up. That is, he is
interested in the use of ‘I know’ not just where it can be substituted by ‘I am
certain/sure’ but where, in addition to that substitution, it actually also possesses objective
certainty. If so, though, the word ‘express’ is in the wrong place. ‘I know’
expresses, fallibly, a claim to objective certainty. But also: surely this just
means cases where one’s knowledge or certainty claim <i>successfully</i> excludes
the possibility of mistake. And that still does not distinguish knowledge and
certainty.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">Still, I've two chapters to go and it may be that the butler really does it. I post this mainly in the hope of getting quick corrections to my email address.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Coliva, A. (2010) <i>Moore and Wittgenstein:</i> <i>Scepticism,
Certainty and Common Sense</i>, Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan<o:p></o:p></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-81362956357607367472021-06-07T15:57:00.016+01:002021-06-07T17:07:06.887+01:00Closure vs underdetermination versions of scepticism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hv7hdZHnT3I/YL46qRV5zcI/AAAAAAAAqE0/fyTBrmrJvP0o2BxEnr3djJ7NvaCMl0IVwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1259/Brueckner%2B%25281994%2529%2BStructure%2Bof%2Bsceptical%2Bargument-page-002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1259" data-original-width="813" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hv7hdZHnT3I/YL46qRV5zcI/AAAAAAAAqE0/fyTBrmrJvP0o2BxEnr3djJ7NvaCMl0IVwCLcBGAsYHQ/w129-h200/Brueckner%2B%25281994%2529%2BStructure%2Bof%2Bsceptical%2Bargument-page-002.jpg" width="129" /></a></div>One of the things that confused me while reading Duncan Pritchard’s book <i>Epistemic Angst</i> is the distinction between closure-based and underdetermination-based
versions of scepticism. I could see the overall architecture of the ‘output’ of this
distinction but not the distinction itself. An instance of the former is given
in a footnote of Pritchard’s paper ‘In defence of closure’.<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I think the real
anti-sceptical import of epistemological disjunctivism lies in responding to
what I call </span>underdetermination-based radical scepticism, which
turns on a difference epistemic principle to closure, and generates what I claim is a logically distinct radical sceptical
argument. See Pritchard (2015, parts 1 & 3) for the details. (Pritchard forthcoming fn 18)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the book, the need for distinct
approaches to the distinct sources of scepticism is summarised in passages such
as this.<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Although the ultimate skeptical
import of the universality of rational evaluation thesis and the insularity of
reasons thesis is the same, it is important to note that they pose distinct
epistemological challenges. Suppose, for example, that one rejected the
universality of rational evaluation thesis and therefore argued that there are
in principle limitations on the scope of rational evaluation. In this way, one
could argue that closure<sub>RK</sub>-based inferences need to be restricted in
some way to prevent them from taking the subject from local to global rational
evaluations. One could thus undermine the closure<sub>RK</sub>-based radical
skeptical paradox. In particular, one could hold that one’s rationally grounded
knowledge of everyday propositions—as far as this formulation of the skeptical
paradox goes at any rate—is entirely compatible with a lack of rationally
grounded knowledge of the denials of radical skeptical hypotheses (on account
of the fact that one cannot employ a closure<sub>RK</sub>-based inference in
order to claim that one’s rationally grounded knowledge of everyday
propositions, if genuine, would entail the contested rationally grounded
anti-skeptical knowledge).</p><p></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It
is far from obvious how that would help one resolve the problem posed by the
insularity of reasons thesis, however. That one can have rationally grounded
knowledge of mundane external world propositions while lacking rationally
grounded knowledge of the denials of radical skeptical hypotheses is one thing;
that one can have adequately rationally grounded knowledge of mundane external
world propositions when that rational basis (one is aware) does not favor one’s
everyday beliefs over skeptical alternatives quite another. As one might put
the point, if one’s everyday beliefs do not satisfy the underdetermination<sub>RK</sub>
principle, then in virtue of what, exactly, do they amount to rationally
grounded knowledge? Thus, even with the closure<sub>RK</sub> principle out of
(skeptical) action, one can still employ the underdetermination<sub>RK</sub>
principle—and, thereby, the insularity of reasons thesis—to motivate a radical
skeptical conclusion.</span></p><p></p></blockquote><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So the general picture is this. Part of the originality of Pritchard’s
view is that there are two sources of scepticism, which thus need two
distinct treatments. For closure based scepticism, the treatment is an account
of hinge epistemology (blocking the effects of closure). For underdetermination, he appeals to disjunctivism.
That seems plausible enough, but I’m still not sure what the different sources
are. These are each outlined in the first two chapters, one on each. In each case, a principle –
closure or underdetermination – is used to generate an argument for scepticism
and then an incompatible triad of prima facie plausible claims. And in each
chapter, there’s a version of the principle and the argument that stresses an
internalist, rationalist approach. For speed, I’ll simply give the quotes
hoping that this outline is enough to explain what they are doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Closure Principle<br />
If <i>S </i>knows that <i>p</i>, and <i>S </i>competently deduces from <i>p </i>that
<i>q</i>, thereby forming a belief that <i>q </i>on this basis while retaining
her knowledge that <i>p</i>, then <i>S </i>knows that <i>q.</i>…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Radical Skeptical Paradox (I)<br />
(S11) One cannot know that one is not a BIV.<br />
(S12) If one cannot know that one is not a BIV, then one cannot know that E.<br />
(S13) One knows that E.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[T]he epistemic externalist is keen to
break the logical link between knowledge and rational support, such that one
can have the former without the latter, they surely do not wish to disengage
our everyday knowledge from rational support altogether. Or, at least, the
skeptic can force a dilemma here. On the first horn of the dilemma is the
charge that the epistemic externalist is ultimately offering no response at all
to the skeptical problem. On the second horn is the charge that the epistemic externalist
is presenting us with an epistemological proposal that is so revisionist, so
discontinuous with our ordinary epistemic practices, that even the most ardent
proponent of epistemic externalism would find it unpalatable.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The ClosureRK Principle<br />
If <i>S </i>has rationally grounded knowledge that <i>p</i>, and <i>S </i>competently
deduces from <i>p </i>that <i>q</i>, thereby forming a belief that <i>q </i>on
this basis while retaining her rationally grounded knowledge that <i>p</i>,
then <i>S </i>has rationally grounded knowledge that <i>q</i>.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Radical Skeptical Paradox (II)<br />
(S21) One cannot have rationally grounded knowledge that one is not a BIV.<br />
(S22) If one cannot have rationally grounded knowledge that one is not a BIV,
then one cannot have rationally grounded knowledge that E.<br />
(S33) One has rationally grounded knowledge that E.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Inconsistent Radical Skeptical
Triad<br />
(I) One is unable to know the denials of radical skeptical hypotheses.10<br />
(II) The closure principle.<br />
(III) One has widespread everyday knowledge.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Underdetermination Principle<br />
If <i>S </i>knows that <i>p </i>and <i>q </i>describe incompatible scenarios,
and yet <i>S </i>lacks a rational basis that favors <i>p </i>over <i>q</i>,
then <i>S </i>lacks knowledge that <i>p</i>.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Radical Skeptical Paradox (III)<br />
(S31) One cannot have rational support that favors one’s belief that E over the
BIV hypothesis.<br />
(S32) If one cannot have rational support that favors one’s belief that E over
the BIV hypothesis, then one does not know that E.<br />
(S33) One knows that E.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The UnderdeterminationRK Principle<br />
If <i>S </i>knows that <i>p </i>and <i>q </i>describe incompatible scenarios,
and yet <i>S </i>lacks a rational basis that favors <i>p </i>over <i>q</i>,
then <i>S </i>lacks rationally grounded knowledge that <i>p</i>.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Radical Skeptical Paradox (IV)<br />
(S41) One cannot have rational support that favors one’s belief that E over the
BIV hypothesis.<br />
(S42) If one cannot have rational support that favors one’s belief that E over
the BIV hypothesis, then one does not have rationally grounded knowledge that
E.<br />
(S43) One has rationally grounded knowledge that E.…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The Inconsistent Radical Skeptical
Triad**<br />
(I**) One cannot have rational support that favors one’s belief in an everyday
proposition over an incompatible radical skeptical hypothesis.<br />
(II**) The underdetermination principle.<br />
(III**) One has widespread everyday knowledge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">My confusion is that these seem very closely related sources of
scepticism. It is not, for example, akin to the wide difference between Agrippan
and Cartesian scepticism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Now this does not help with Pritchard’s view, but it is interesting
to look (at the suggestion of my ex-co-author) at Anthony Brueckner</span>’s paper ‘The Structure of the Skeptical Argument’.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Brueckner<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> sets out
the argument for scepticism using material similar to Pritchard’s triad (give or
take a NOT) starting with closure; then that we do not know the negation of the
ringer; then that we do not know everyday claims. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">(1A) If I know that P. then I know
that -SK. <br />
(2A) I do not know that -SK. <br />
(3A) I do not know that P.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This is a first stab at codifying the argument. Closure is there as a
big general premise but then, equally necessary, is the minor premise that we do not know the
negation of the ringer. From that scepticism about everyday matters follows.
But why don’t we know the negation of the ringer? For this, Brueckner invokes underdetermination.
So the fuller argument is underpinned by two principles:</span><b> </b>Closure with
respect to justification (CIJ) and also underdetermination (UP). Both are in play for the same argument.<b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">(CIJ) For all S φ, ψ</span>, if S has justification for believing
that φ, and (φ → ψ), then S has justification for
believing that ψ.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">(UP) For all S, φ</span>, ψ, if S’s evidence for believing that φ does not favor φ over some incompatible
hypothesis ψ, then S
lacks justification for believing that φ. <br />
This underdetermination principle helps establish the result that I lack
justification for believing that -SK.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This gives the fuller codification of external world scepticism
thus:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">(1B) If I have justification for
believing that P, then I have justification for believing that -SK. [from (CIJ)]
<br />
(2B) If my evidence for believing that -SK does not favor -SK over SK, then I
lack justification for believing that -SK. [from (UP)] <br />
(3B) My evidence for believing that -SK (my sensory evidence) does not favor
-SK over SK. [premise] (4B) I lack justification for believing that -SK. [from
2B, 3B] <br />
(5B) I lack justification for believing that P. [from 1B, 4B] <br />
(6B) I do not know that P. [from 5B]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">This makes much more sense to me than Pritchard’s approach. In
fact, however, Brueckner
goes on first to compare underdetermination and closure and argue that they are very similar and then to reconstruct
the whole argument using underdetermination alone as a kind of ‘uber’ principle. Here’s
the former.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">What is the difference, if any,
between argument B's two underlying epistemic principles, viz. the
underdetermination principle and the principle that justification is closed
under entailment? It is helpful to consider the following principle, which is equivalent
to (UP): <br />
(UP') For all S, φ, ψ, if one has
justification for believing that φ,
and φ and ψ are incompatible, then
one's evidence for believing that φ
favors φ over ψ. <br />
Now consider a principle which is equivalent to (CIJ'): <br />
(CIJ") For all S, φ,
ψ, if one has
justification for believing that φ,
and φ and ψ are incompatible, then
one has justification for believing that -ψ. <br />
(CIJ’') and (UP') share a common antecedent, but their consequents differ. Suppose
that S has justification for believing that φ and suppose that ψ is a competing incompatible hypothesis.
According to (CIJ"), S then has justification for rejecting ψ. According to (UP'),
what follows from the supposition is that S's evidence for φ favors φ over ψ. What is the difference
be- tween these two putative necessary conditions for S's justification for
believing that φ? (CIJ")
says nothing about S's evidence for believing that φ, thereby leaving it open that S's
justification for φ is
not evidentially based. Then S could have justification for believing both φ and -ψ without having evidence
which favors φ over ψ. But in cases in which
S's justification for φ
is so based, do the principles differ? If (CIJ") were restricted to
evidentially justified φs,
then it seems that the resultant principle would be virtually equivalent to
(UP').<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Here’s the latter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">(1C) If my evidence for believing that
P does not favor P over SK, then I lack justification for believing that P.
[from (UP)] <br />
(2C) My evidence for believing that P (my sensory evidence) does not favor P
over SK. [premise] <br />
(3C) I lack justification for believing that P. [from IC, 2C] <br />
(4C) I do not know that P. [from 3C]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So my worry, in a nutshell, is that even without Brueckner’s reconstruction of
closure in terms of underdetermination, I’m not sure that we have two forms of scepticism
– akin to the distinction in kind between Agrippan and Cartesian, for example – as opposed to one codification with two underlying premises and hence two different potential
points of attack for an anti-sceptic. One could attack closure – and hence the spread of the
sceptical infection from a sceptical ringer back to everyday claims – or one
could attack the efficacy of the sceptical ringer. If they are not distinct
forms of scepticism, in the way Pritchard argues, there is no need for two
simultaneous treatments. Hence the main selling point for his book looks rather odd.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(Then again, having just had my
second AstraZeneca vaccine dose, I wouldn’t say no if offered the Pfizer as
well.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>References<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Brueckner, A. (1994) ‘The Structure of the Skeptical Argument’ <i>Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research</i>, 54: 827-835<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Pritchard, D.H. (2019) <i>Epistemic
angst: Radical skepticism and the groundlessness of our believing</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">. Princeton: Princeton University Press.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Pritchard, D.H. (forthcoming) ‘In defence
of closure’ in J<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ope, M. Pritchard, D.H. (eds.) </span><i>New Perspectives on</i><i> Epistemic Closure</i>,
London: Routledge<b>.</b></span></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-67595130146555929282021-06-04T15:08:00.019+01:002021-06-04T16:30:57.034+01:00Norman Malcolm’s ‘Wittgenstein: The relation of language to instinctive behaviour’<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hs8qH8RL6-o/YLozhn9t5PI/AAAAAAAAqC0/Ep_vSsznq1EWF1XGjTP7tUIXzkJqM8QoQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1350/Malcolm%252C%2BN.%2B%25281982%2529%2BWittgenstein%2B-%2BThe%2Brelation%2Bof%2Blanguage%2Bto%2Binstinctive%2Bbehaviour-page-001.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="900" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hs8qH8RL6-o/YLozhn9t5PI/AAAAAAAAqC0/Ep_vSsznq1EWF1XGjTP7tUIXzkJqM8QoQCLcBGAsYHQ/w133-h200/Malcolm%252C%2BN.%2B%25281982%2529%2BWittgenstein%2B-%2BThe%2Brelation%2Bof%2Blanguage%2Bto%2Binstinctive%2Bbehaviour-page-001.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>As well as advising a UCLan philosophy student on his dissertation, my reason
for returning to read the literature around <i>On Certainty</i> (OC) is one of those
periodic realisations that a change of view in one area forces a change
elsewhere. I realised that my quick summary, the sort of thing I used to say, at least on my previous interpretation of it, won’t do as an <i>endorsing </i>account of <i>On Certainty</i>.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The sort of thing I tend to say is that OC is radical
because LW separates the game of giving and asking for reasons, of knowledge
and doubt, from certainty. A framework of both animal and inherited certainty
is the condition of possibility of knowledge claims and also of claims to doubt
since doubts, too, take work and a context to make them reasonable. (On this, I
like to remind myself that claiming that one didn’t know one’s suspiciously
suddenly dead partner’s bank balance will not get waved through as it might in
an epistemology class. One can be assumed to have picked up knowledge - rubbing
off on one like an infectious disease - unless there is good reason why not.)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But implicit in my own past understanding of the sort of thing I
tend to say was the idea that not only was knowledge distinct from the sort of certainties
that plays a role in OC – let’s follow the literature and call them ‘hinge
propositions’ – but that knowledge itself wasn’t certain. I thought this, if I am
honest now, because I wasn’t much interested in epistemology and so had never
really thought about any necessary conditions one could offer for knowledge
(even if one eschews illuminating sufficient conditions). I suspect I
subscribed implicitly to some sort of JTB analysis of knowledge and simply
accepted that the justification condition didn’t need to be very strong. Reliabilism
was sadly rife in the department in which I did my PhD (Cambridge HPS) and so perhaps this persuaded me in the
same direction. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Since then, however, I’ve become much more attached to the
McDowellian and Travisian view that attempts to combine fallibilism with the
idea that if one knows something, one cannot be wrong. Not just because of the
facticity of knowledge but because of the luck-eliminating exclusion of counter-factual
possibilities. Given that their view is an action at a distance of Oxford
Realism, my sick-leave project is to rethink <i>On Certainty</i> through the conceptual
spectacles of Oxford Realism.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am, however, still at the personal archaeological stage
and hence looking at the sources I recall liking. At the top of the list is Norman Malcolm’s ‘Wittgenstein:
The relation of language to instinctive behaviour’ (Malcolm 1982).</p><p class="MsoNormal">Malcolm’s
main theme is that language is grafted onto primitive, animal behaviour. Malcom
takes this to contrast a cognitivist or representationalist view, citing
Chomsky and Fodor. This takes up the first 5 sections of the 12 section paper.
In §6 he describes Moore’s comments about being certain that he has clothes on
and then that he knows this. He quotes Moore thus:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">How absurd it would be to suggest that
I did not know it, but only believed it, and that perhaps it was not the case! You
might as well suggest that I do not know that I am now standing up and talking -
that perhaps after all I’m not, and that it’s not quite certain that I am! (Moore
1959: 146-147). (Malcolm 1982: 12)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In §7, Malcolm sets out his account of Wittgenstein’s
criticism of Moore. It includes:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">If Moore had declared to his audience
that he did <i>not </i>have clothes on, was not standing up, did not have <i>two
</i>hands, etc., the people there would have regarded him not as <i>mistaken, </i>but
as <i>mentally disturbed </i>(OC 155).<i> </i>Why is this? Apparently because
we expect an adult speaker of the language, who is in possession of his
faculties, to be able in normal circumstances, to say straight off, without
looking for evidence, whether he has clothes on, or whether he is sitting or standing.
<br />
This helps to bring out the fact that Moore is wrong in saying that he <i>knows
</i>these things. For when a person contends that he is not merely convinced of
something but <i>knows </i>it to be so, we expect him to be able to produce
evidence in support of this distinction. But Moore was in no position to do this.
As Wittgenstein says, if what a person believes ‘is of such a kind that the
grounds which he can give are no surer than his assertion, then he cannot say
that he knows what he believes’ (OC243). (ibid: 13)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first part of this quotation reiterates Moore’s unexceptional
certainty about himself and his state of dress. But the second part moves to
suggest that Moore <i>does not know</i> this, opening up a gap between
knowledge and certainty which forms a key part of what I tended to say about OC.
That’s how I took this, 30 years ago. But now it seems to me that something
else has also been introduced: that Moore is wrong to <i>say</i> he knows this. Malcolm says: <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">When
a person <i>contends</i> that he knows<i> </i>something to be so, we expect him to be
able to produce evidence in support of this. But Moore was in no position to do
so.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A little later Malcolm says:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">The case is exactly the same here as
with Moore’s assertion, ‘I <i>know </i>that that’s a tree’, which he reiterated
in philosophical discussion. Wittgenstein said of this: ‘I know that that’s a
tree’. Why does it strike me as if I did not understand the sentence?, though it
is after all an extremely simple sentence of the most ordinary kind?... As soon
as I think of an everyday use of the sentence instead of a philosophical one,
its meaning becomes clear and ordinary (OC 347). Outside of ordinary contexts
neither ‘I am certain’ nor ‘It is certain’ (that I have two hands) has a clear
meaning. (ibid: 14)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Again the focus is on saying ‘I know’. Note also the immediate connection to certainty. ‘I am certain’ is treated here as akin to ‘I know’. But in this case Malcom
continues with: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Nor can a person who is going about
his affairs in ordinary life be said to assume, or take for granted, or
presuppose, that he has two hands. (ibid: 14)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But this seems to me an entirely separate matter and not obviously
true. Why can we not say that such a person ‘takes for granted’ his having
hands? Of course, we will need a context in which this will be a sensible thing
to <i>say</i>. But perhaps just this piece of philosophical anthropology is that
context. A person may check some thing but not others. It may not come as news to anyone on Earth that an ordinary person, albeit a Cambridge philosopher, does not generally check that they have hands. But that fact itself may be interesting in a piece of philosophical anthropology, as a reminder of something always before us. Malcolm seems – precisely
– to be interested in this, in this very paper.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Later Malcolm adds:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Wittgenstein says: ‘I would like to
reserve the expression “I know” for the cases in which it is used in normal
linguistic exchange’ (OC 260). Of course the same should hold for ‘I believe’, ‘I
am certain’, ‘I agree’, ‘I assume’, and also ‘I do not doubt’. (ibid: 18)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Note again that this concerns first person present tense avowals, not underlying states of knowledge. Note also that there is an immediate link to ‘I am certain’. There is no distinction here between ‘I know’ and ‘I am certain’ with respect to reserving their first person present tense uses to the uses in ordinary circumstances (a critical remark against Moore but not yet telling). </p><p class="MsoNormal">The underlying theme of Malcom’s paper is the absence of
doubt that underlies the use of words and which Malcolm suggests characterises
hinge propositions. He argues that it is difficult to articulate because, in
some sense, it cannot be put into words.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Wittgenstein conceives of the absence
of doubt that exists at <i>so </i>many points in the daily course of our lives,
as not something ‘hasty or superficial’ but as ‘something that lies beyond
being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal’ (OC 358,359).
It is too fundamental to be either ‘unjustified’ or ‘justified’. It underlies
any mastery of words in which a procedure of justification could be framed. This
fundamental thing is so fundamental that it is difficult, or perhaps
impossible, to describe it in words. One would <i>like </i>to characterize it
in mental terms - to call it knowledge, or belief, or conviction, or certainty,
or acceptance, or confidence, or assumption. But none of these expressions fit.
All of them have their appropriate application <i>within </i>various
language-games. Whereas Wittgenstein is trying to call attention to something
that underlies all language-games. But can’t one give a characterization at
least in <i>negative </i>terms of this fundamental thing? Wittgenstein attempts
this in many passages. A formulation he frequently resorts to is ‘the absence of
doubt’. (ibid: 17-18)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">There are indications in <i>On
Certainty </i>that Wittgenstein is dissatisfied with every attempt to
characterize this fact that is so fundamental to language, thought and action.
Suppose that a customer tells a greengrocer that he wants ten apples, and the
shopkeeper proceeds to count them out. Wittgenstein says: <br />
If the shopkeeper wanted to investigate each of his apples without any reason,
in order to play safe, why doesn’t he have to investigate the investigation?
And can one speak here of belief (I mean belief as in religious belief, not
conjecture)? Here all psychological terms merely lead us away from the main thing
(OC 459) <br />
In order to have ‘absolute certainty’ must not the shopkeeper try to determine
not only that these things are apples, but also that what he is doing is trying
to find out whether they are apples, and in addition that he is really counting
them? And if the shopkeeper doesn’t do this, is this because he ‘believes’, or
‘knows’, or is ‘certain’, or is ‘convinced’, or ‘assumes’, or ‘has no doubt’,
that these are apples and that he is counting them? No. All psychological
terms, says Wittgenstein, lead us away from ‘the main thing’ (<i>die Hauptsache</i>)<i>.</i>
(ibid: 19)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hence a connection back to the saying vs. showing distinction
that seems to be found in the <i>Tractatus</i> (‘seems’ because of the ongoing debate
as to whether it is voiced in propria persona).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Am I not getting closer and closer to saying
that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language,
then you will see it (OC501). <br />
<i>Logic cannot be described! </i>I take this to mean that it is not
appropriate for Wittgenstein to say either that he ‘knows’, or ‘believes’, or is
‘certain’, or is ‘convinced’, or ‘assumes’, or ‘does not doubt’, that his name
is L. W., or that this is called a ‘hand’, or that the law of induction is true.
None of these terms are correct. What does it mean to say: ‘You must look at
the practice of language, then you will see it’? <i>What </i>do you see? Well,
you see <i>the unhesitating behaviour </i>with which a person signs his name at
the end of a letter or gives his name to a bank clerk; or uses the word ‘hand’
in statements; or makes inductive inferences; or does calculations; and so on. <br />
What you see is this unhesitating way of <i>acting. </i>This is the ‘logic’ of language
that cannot be described with psychological words. It is too ‘primitive’, too
‘instinctive’, for that. It is <i>behaviour </i>that is <i>like </i>the
squirrel’s gathering nuts or the cat’s watching a mouse hole. This is why
Wittgenstein says it is something animal (OC359). (ibid: 19-20)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Again, however, Malcolm thinks there is a difficulty in putting
something into words. In this case, his own attempt to describe the absence of
doubt that, he thinks, underpins Wittgenstein’s account.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Just now I have spoken of this human
behaviour as ‘unhesitating’, and previously as ‘confident’. But isn’t this a
strained use of these words? When I sign my name to a cheque in the normal way,
is it correct to say that I do it ‘confidently’ or ‘without hesitation’? It seems
not. If, with advancing senility, I sometimes forgot my name, or sometimes
write it unconfidently, then an observer could report of me, ‘This time he
wrote his name confidently, without any hesitation’. Or if I had been given a
drug that is supposed to produce amnesia, an observer might report, with
surprise, ‘Why, he stated his name quite confidently!’ But the way in which a
normal adult normally comes out with his own name and with the names of
familiar objects, cannot be called either ‘confident’ or ‘unconfident’,
‘hesitating’ or ‘unhesitating’. (ibid: 20)</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Malcolm is surely right to say that in these latter specific
contexts concerning senility or being drugged, it would make sense to describe an action as ‘confident’ or ‘unhesitating’
and that, in other ordinary circumstances, the very same fluency of action
would not call for these descriptions. The attempt to compliment one’s partner
as they signed their signature in ordinary circumstances using one of these words would likely backfire.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it is not clear that there is no context <i>here</i> to
use these words in Malcolm’s attempt to describe normal doubt-free action.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I think that this point generalises to Malcolm’s comments about
Wittgenstein’s criticism of Moore saying that he knew he was clothed. Without
some appropriate context, such an avowal is otiose. It is unclear what Moore
would be saying. Equally, without some context, it is unclear what is being
said in the case of a philosopher saying, of a tree before them, that ‘that is
a tree’ or ‘I know that that is a tree’. But it does <i>not</i> follow that the
same philosopher does not know that it is a tree. His knowing that it is a tree
might be cited in evidence <i>against</i> him if his defence depended on there having
been no tall objects in the vicinity. The opposing barrister might say: ‘You could hardly have failed to spot the tree in front of you in good light and clear weather?!? So you could hardly have failed to know that there was indeed a tall tree available for your nefarious purposes?!? Your defence that you <i>did not know this</i> is a tissue of lies!’</p><p class="MsoNormal">Nor does it follow that Moore’s certainty
is not the certainty of knowledge. In normal circumstances and when in full
view of a partner it would be bizarre to <i>say </i>‘I am wearing clothes’ or ‘I know
that I am wearing clothes’. But it does not follow that one does <i>not know</i> that
one is wearing clothes. It just does not require stating.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Malcom suggests that ‘<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">when a person contends that he is not merely
convinced of something but <i>knows </i>it to be so, we expect him to be able
to produce evidence in support of this distinction’. Moore himself acknowledged
that there was nothing he could do to <i>establish </i>or to <i>prove </i>his having two hands. He shares
Wittgenstein’s view that nothing, in normal circumstances, could be used to establish
this because nothing would have better credentials. He differs from Wittgenstein
and Malcolm in not thinking that this disbars this as knowledge. So how
plausible is Malcolm’s claim (on Wittgenstein’s behalf)? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Note, first, that it
concerns the use of the avowal ‘I know’ rather then whether knowledge is in play and so it
offers no support to the point at hand (whether Moore knows, not whether his
saying ‘I know’ has a clear sense). But, second, even as a comment on avowals
it seems wrong. While one may be convinced of something but not know it
(because of the facticity of knowledge) to say that one is convinced of
something but that one does not know it sounds very strange. Eschewing
knowledge implies a lack of conviction. Avowing conviction implies that one
takes oneself to know (whether or not correctly).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In sum, although I didn’t think this 30 years ago, it now seems to
me that Malcolm makes awfully heavy weather of all this. The difficulties that
resolute readers of Wittgenstein highlight concerning whether one has actually said
anything by simply asserting the word string ‘I know…’ without suitable circumstances and an intelligible purpose do not carry over third
person ascriptions of knowledge or third person ascriptions of an absence of
doubt. Malcolm’s very success in outlining a philosophical context enables his
own third person descriptions to carry a content even as he disowns it. And nothing shows the falsity of the idea that Moore <i>knows </i>these things even if his own avowal fails.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">(Moore 1; Wittgenstein 1; Malcolm 0)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>References<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Malcolm, N. (1982) ‘Wittgenstein: The relation of language
to instinctive behaviour’ <i>Philosophical Investigations, </i>5: 3-22<o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-51696955816604355402021-05-19T14:23:00.009+01:002021-05-20T12:56:29.898+01:00Getting no further, 10 years later, with Charles Travis ‘A sense of occasion’<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4NV27k2cdrI/YKUREsZxQ4I/AAAAAAAAp-A/zaTDJ5961gMhLM9fYcl1m2buKHgSDU-UQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Travis%252C%2BC.%2BA%2Bsense%2Bof%2Boccasion-page-002.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1533" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4NV27k2cdrI/YKUREsZxQ4I/AAAAAAAAp-A/zaTDJ5961gMhLM9fYcl1m2buKHgSDU-UQCLcBGAsYHQ/w150-h200/Travis%252C%2BC.%2BA%2Bsense%2Bof%2Boccasion-page-002.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>Nearly ten years ago, I wrote a
<a href="https://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2012/01/charles-travis-sense-of-occasion.html" target="_blank">summary</a> of Charles Travis’ utterly fascinating 2005 paper ‘A sense of occasion’.
Although I was able to follow the bulk of the argument and, despite the passage
of time, I hold by and large with my 2012 reading of it, I failed to follow the
key argument in the penultimate section.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Sadly, I still cannot. I do not
understand how occasion sensitivity can do for knowledge what it does for Lac
Leman’s being blue. I cannot work out what my blind-spot is. It ought to be
obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">So I’ll start where I left off
ten years ago. This is where I become too stupid.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Max
speaks truth in saying there might be goats. The truth he speaks is that there
might be, on a certain understanding of something’s being what might be: what
one ought to understand by this on this occasion. Again, if there is
occasion-sensitivity, then there are not, in addition to such facts as to what
might be when one understands might be in this or that way, further facts as to
what might be anyway, occasion-insensitively. It is facts of the first kind,
and not such supposed further facts, that bear on the truth of knowledge ascriptions,
different ones on different ascriptions. Where Sid does not know, he is not to
be treated as authoritative; where he does, he is. That rule applies equally in
Pia’s situation and in Max’s. There is no difficulty in the idea that some
people, engaging with the world in given ways, ought to treat Sid as an
authority while others, engaged in other ways, ought not – even if the latter
cannot recognize what the former ought to do.<br />
Max ought not to treat Sid as an authority. For he ought to treat goats behind
the barn as a way things might be. If he does so treat it, he will see what Pia
said as indifferent to a possibility. But what Pia’s statement is indifferent
to is what might be on a certain understanding of what might be. It need not
thereby be indifferent to any way things might be, on that understanding of
might be which its occasion calls for. (Nor is that more than Max, on his
occasion, can recognize consistently.) So it need not be understood as
crediting Sid with any status he might enjoy despite the existence of
possibilities that he is wrong. It may be crediting him with a status he can
only enjoy in having proof he grasps as proof. What may vary from one occasion
to another (from Max’s, say, to Pia’s) is what would count as enjoying that.<br />
What, if right, would demonstrate occasion-sensitivity is this. For us, both
Pia’s occasion and Max’s may be fully in view. We can see all that would make
things count one way on the one occasion, another on the other – if the
relevant notions are occasion-sensitive. If there is not occasionsensitivity,
then at most one of these occasions exhibits the facts as they really are. For
there are then only occasion-insensitive facts as to what (really) might be, no
matter what else passes for that on one occasion or the other. So either it
really might be that there are goats behind the barn, or, really, that is not a
way things might be, punkt. So which is it? What Austin and I think is that
this question has no motivated answer. Nothing in the way things are gives the
one answer any better credentials than the other as an answer to the question
what (really) might be. If we are right, and if the point holds, not just for
goats behind the barn, but reasonably systematically, then there can be no
facts about what might be (or surely not enough) if those facts are not
occasion-sensitive ones. That is always the mainspring of occasion-sensitivity.
I think it is easy to confirm in the case at hand. [ibid: 308-9]<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Let’s assume that both sheep
and some goats bleat. Sid can recognise bleats from other noises that animals
make (barks, tweets) and lives in a sheep-only environment. Thus when he hears
a bleat, it is a sheep bleat and he can tell a bleat from a bark, say. Hearing
bleating from the barn, does he know there are sheep in there?</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Pia
can see the barn and where Sid is standing, listening. As far as she is
concerned, she can hear sheep bleating in the barn. She thinks she knows that
there are sheep in the barn and she ascribes that knowledge to Sid. Perhaps she
hears Sid say aloud: “Lo, the sound of sheep bleating from the barn.”</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">(One
possibility mentioned by Travis is that she can acquire knowledge that there
are sheep by hearing what Sid says and knowing that Sid can tell a sheep by its
noise even if she cannot. She might be a consumer of his knowledge rather than
having equal standing.)</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">As
a variant, she walks round the barn simply for exercise, seeing, by chance,
that there are no creatures behind it. This does not change her ascription.
(Obviously, there’s a point to this, below.)</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Max
can see and hear everything that Pia can. Standing next to Sid he refuses to
ascribe knowledge or even a true belief to Sid. But, as in the variant above,
once he has walked round the barn, he thinks that what Sid says is true but,
despite this, he does not ascribe *knowledge* to Sid. Although he does think
that Sid *thinks* he knows that there are sheep in the barn (that Sid’s saying
“Lo, the sound of sheep” is supposed to be expressive of knowledge) and
although he thinks that this is true because he, Max, thinks that he, Max,
knows that there are sheep in the barn (again possibly, ironically, partly
because of what Sid himself says) still Sid’s true belief is merely lucky. It
doesn’t amount to knowledge. Why? Well see a bit later.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">With
this in place, I will go back to Travis’ famous example of Lac Leman being blue
and assume in parallel that Pia says it is, because it looks very blue as it
reflects the sky, whereas water-scientist Max says that, unlike other lakes
nearby, there are no alluvial deposits shading it blue and so it is not blue on
his understanding. (A bucket of it would not look blue.) In this case, it seems
possible to contextualise both Pia and Max and to agree that what they both
said was true in the way that they were thinking of being blue. If someone - a
philosopher - were to press the question of whether it was ‘really’ blue, we
might have to clarify context and perhaps adopt one use or other but in general
it would seem the wrong question to ask, something of a non-sequitur. (The
existing full story already shows how it is blue in one sense and not blue in
another and whether one sense seems more important is a practical, not a
philosophical, matter.)</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span color="inherit" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">(Travis suggests that a
philosopher asking whether someone *really* knows is equally otiose.)</span></span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">So
let’s go back to the knowledge case. Can we run the same contextualising form
of interpretation and arrive at a view whereby both Pia and Max are right to say,
although on different understanding of what they are saying, that Sid does know
(ie Pia) and that he does not (ie Max)? </span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">I’m
struggling to do this.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Since
both Pia and Max think (on the variant) - correctly - that Sid has a true
belief about the sheep, the difference is in the third condition on knowledge.
(I assume I can speak this way even without thinking that there is an
informative sufficient analysis of knowledge. Still, putative knowledge is
undermined by luck as Gettier stresses.) So let’s fill out a context for Max. </span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Perhaps
Max knows that goats have recently been introduced to the neighbourhood and
tend to try to steal food through the rear walls of sheep barns. Since Sid has
not checked behind the barn, he does not know that there are no goats - though,
in the variant, Max can see that there are no goats - and so Sid does not know
that the bleating is sheep bleating. It might have been that there were goats
instead and that is enough to undermine an ascription of knowledge to Sid. Max
does not ascribe even true belief to Sid until he has himself looked round the
barn because he does not think that he himself knows there are sheep until he
has done this. For Max, the variant case is necessary even to ascribe true
belief to Sid (and to self-ascribe knowledge) that there are sheep in the barn.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">In
the natural reading of the initial set-up - before we conjured up the
food-stealing goats - Pia seemed right to ascribe knowledge to Sid on the
grounds that he could hear the bleating and no goats had been mentioned (and in
the variant Pia could see there were none, even if Sid could not). But with the
new context in play, then it seems that Max would deny Pia knowledge until she
walked round the barn. In her first view of things, she neglected a real
possibility. And according to Max, Sid always neglects this possibility because
there might have been goats and he didn’t (timelessly: doesn’t) check this (as,
in the variant, Pia does). So, according to Max, Pia was wrong to ascribe
knowledge to Sid even when, after walking round the barn, she was right to
self-ascribe knowledge.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Unlike
the Lac Leman case, I struggle to find a context pertaining to what ‘might have
been’ such that both Pia and Max were right to take their different views of
Sid’s knowledge status. </span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">How
about this? Max is sensitive to a merely recent incursion of foreign goats,
upsetting the long-standing sheep-only balance of nature. That is why he thinks
that there might have been goats behind the barn. Perhaps, however, whether or
not the incursion had happened, the goats would never have tolerated the thin
atmosphere of this high altitude barn. Knowing this further fact, Pia does not
even need to walk round it to rule out goats and can thus know (even before the
variant) that the bleating implies sheep and hence Sid knows that there are
sheep. </span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">The
problem with this is that it seems that it undermines Max’s view of things.
Although he does think it, Max is *wrong* to think that there might have been
goats behind the barn. Pia *knows* that there could not be. Thus Sid’s reliance
on the sound of bleating was sufficient for Sid to know that there were sheep
in the barn. This is one possibility. Pia is right about Sid and Max is wrong
about Sid.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">Perhaps
not, however. Max may take the view that although *Pia* knows about the effects
of altitude on goats and he, Max, - obviously (since he is a water-scientist in
the other case) - does too, Sid hasn’t explored goat respiration with
sufficient attention to count as a knower. Sid’s assumption that there are no
goats, while as it happens reliable, is, in Max’s view as far as Sid goes,
merely a matter of luck. Max does not think that Sid is epistemically
responsible. Max thinks that the fact, and the exclusion of goat-ringers, is
outside Sid’s ken. What might have been is brutely external to Sid’s thinking.
Etc, etc. But, again, if Max is right, then Pia is wrong.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; min-height: 22.7px; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">So
this still seems different to the Lac Leman case. Imagine that Max and Pia have
a conversation about the goat respiration angle. She stresses that no goat
could dwell at that altitude; he says that while that seems to be the latest
science, it is hot off the presses and Sid would have had no right to rely on
it even had he given it any thought unless he did more than glance at the <i>Daily</i>
<i>Mail</i> headlines. There does not seem to be a Bernard Williams absolute conception style
representation that redeems both of their apparently opposing views. Either
they will continue to disagree or one view will win out.</span></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span color="inherit" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><span class="xs1"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">There does not seem to be any
clear but equivalent uses here of what ‘might have been the case’ akin to the
equivalent cases of what sort of ‘blue’ one meant when one said the Lake was
blue. Max and Pia may rationally disagree on what, actually as it were, might
have been the case. That may be enough to suggest that there is no fact of the
matter and hence no fact of the matter as to knowledge status. But there does
not seem room for disagreement on the use or contextual meaning of ‘what might
have been the case’ here such that, from yet another perspective, both parties
can be easily understood to be speaking the truth when - apparently - saying
the opposite thing. (The point being: in the Lac Leman case, they are not
saying the opposite thing despite using the same English sentence.)</span></span></span><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6658432996374251907.post-88858249721153054482021-05-11T14:31:00.010+01:002021-05-11T20:59:51.497+01:00Danièle Moyal-Sharrock on Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4iSz5FtrybM/YJqE3v4ilJI/AAAAAAAAp8s/fmex5L1BXWUh32te5gZXFZkHzWih24MBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s258/Moyal-Sharrock.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="162" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4iSz5FtrybM/YJqE3v4ilJI/AAAAAAAAp8s/fmex5L1BXWUh32te5gZXFZkHzWih24MBgCLcBGAsYHQ/w126-h200/Moyal-Sharrock.jpg" width="126" /></a></div>Back in 2009, I wrote a very brief <a href="http://inthespaceofreasons.blogspot.com/2009/03/bit-more-on-moyal-sharrock-on-on.html" target="_blank">outline</a> of Danièle Moyal-Sharrock’s 2007 book <i>Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty</i> (Moyal-Sharrock 2007). I think my summary (though very inadequate) wasn’t false. So today I want to offer some sort of assessment in the light of other things I’ve read about Wittgenstein’s <i>On Certainty</i> (OC) more recently. <br /><br />According to Moyal-Sharrock, Wittgenstein held bipolarity to be a necessary condition for propositions... <div><br /></div><div>(Bipolarity: every proposition must be capable of being true and capable of being false. It is more restrictive than bivalence: every proposition is either true or false. Thus only something that could be true and could be false counts as a proposition. So, in the context of the later Wittgenstein as usually described (the second Wittgenstein for Moyal-Sharrock), grammatical prescriptions, which set out conditions for playing particular language games (there is no such thing as reddish green; pink is lighter than red; 2 + 2 = 4), cannot be false and thus do not count as propositions. To put it that way is to mislead, however, – sorry! – because neither are they true. At this point, some commentators are happier to say that they are true in a minimal or surd manner.) </div><div><br /></div><div>... The expression of a hinge - in a hinge like context, not an empirical doppelgänger - cannot be false. And so it cannot be a proposition. And hence, in a technical sense, it is nonsense (which is not to say anything value-laden about it!). Nevertheless, even in such a context, a rational speaker must be able to appreciate the semantic relations of the whole to its parts and those parts to other genuine propositions with sense. All this is in her book. <br /><br />Assuming that knowledge is limited to contents expressible as propositions (or, perhaps, contents that simply are propositions) then this non-propositional reading of hinges quickly and directly rules out their being known. Moore does not know the thingy he tries to express in his claim which, were one to overhear it in a crowded bar, one might have taken to concern whether he has a hand - in the non-medical context in which that seemed so sure that it was also proof against scepticism - because there isn’t anything ‘there’ in logical space to be known. He no more knows it than he knows that iggle wiggle piggle. <br /><br />Now tautologies are not propositions either. And they too are related via semantic decomposition and recomposition to empirical, bipolarity-possessing propositions. And yet, someone who knows the truth of a tautology does not thereby know any worldly content. Suppose they know that a particular tautology is true. Apply Dummett’s worry about modest theories of meaning (that there is more to knowing a truth than knowing <i>that</i> it is true and knowledge of meaning requires the former). Can they know, not only <i>that</i> it is true, but its truth? Well perhaps in this derivative sense. They may know enough of the compositional structure of the tautology to know <i>why </i>it is a tautology. In a first year logic exam, this knowledge might be tested. So perhaps this does serve as an analogy for combining the idea that hinges are nonsensical and the idea that a rational speaker must grasp their relations to related bi-polar propositions. <br /><br />Still, it would be an odd analogy (the fault is mine, not Moyal-Sharrock’s but I’m searching for a way to understand her view). Clicking the final pieces of the tautology into place stops it saying anything specific about the world (even if a competent self conscious speaker can explain how the structure yields the tautology). By contrast, Moore’s utterance looks still to have a location in logical space. It looks to link Moore and his hand, presupposing some English words, in a way that also provides a competent speaker the wherewithal to recognise that a doppelgänger sentence is not using any of the words ambiguously or as metaphor or merely in secondary sense. A doppelgänger is, indeed, a <i>doppelgänger </i>of the hinge itself. (Just to be clear: I am warming up to the idea that we know the content of a hinge - thus that it has a content - by taking our ability to construct the right, relevant doppelgänger as one indication. Our selection of the doppelgänger implies we know where, in logical space, to look.)<br /><br />(This makes me wonder what the non-proposition ‘thingy’ (I’d write ‘content’ but it cannot be that; let ‘thingy’ stand in) of the hinge is, for Moyal-Sharrock. It must be something like the <i>use </i>of the sentence in that context. Used in the doppelgänger context, it is a different thing: a successful bi-polar proposition. So it cannot be just the sentence or character string. The words are not <i>sufficient</i> for the thingy. It must be the sentence <i>in use</i>. But given that it is supposed to fail of a <i>use </i>in the hinge context, my phrase “the use of the sentence in that context” must nevertheless be wrong. So of what is the doppelgänger a doppelgänger? Surely, again not the mere sentence or character string, since a synonymous doppelgänger using different words would also be a doppelgänger. (So the very words are not even <i>necessary</i> for the hinge: synonymous ones would do for both hinge and doppelgänger.) It is as though we need to postulate more than the sentence or character string but less than a proposition: a sort of <i>nonsensical sense</i> to serve as the basic vehicle from which doppelgängers can then be constructed. But that seems utter rubbish! This is, I fear, the consequence of starting to use the idea of nonsense as a technical notion.) <br /><br />To return to the analogy with tautology. It seems much odder to say of the hinge - than the tautology - that it does not gesture at a particular bit of logical space. Its content has not been cancelled out in the way that that of a tautology has. <br /><br />I have the impression that Moyal-Sharrock has provided a move in the history of ideas - in this case the specifics of Wittgenstein’s use of ‘proposition’ - rather than a contribution to epistemology (even in the meta-tradition of ending it). Once the notion of nonsense has become merely technical - such that we can say what the connection is between hinges, related empirical propositions and doppelgängers - it no longer provides illumination for <i>why</i> Moore’s claim to know his ‘hinge’ fails. I think that we do at least <i>seem </i>to know / understand what it is - what logical possibility - Moore thinks he knows: namely that ‘this’ (ie that <i>that</i>) is (<i>was</i>) a hand. So the content seems specified: that <i>that was his hand</i>. We might sniffily say that this is technically <i>nonsense </i>– well not that sniffily as ‘nonsense’ is not a value term – but we no longer have a grasp of <i>why </i>this isn’t a content that <i>might </i>be known.<br /><br />Given this, then the failure of Moore to know it falls back from the stark idea that there is nothing to know to the more modest idea that there is a (quasi- or non-Wittgensteinian-propositional) content but that it is just that he <i>doesn’t know it</i>. His <i>attitude </i>is different. Perhaps he lacks the right justification? He might have a different attitude to it, one of animal certainty, and perhaps that it is a task of OC to describe. <br /><br />And I think that this does seem to be a plausible reading of some of what Moyal-Sharrock says. Surely over strongly, she claims that Wittgenstein subscribes to a JTB analysis of knowledge (nothing she cites warrants this, though she does cite context specific connections to justification) and then suggests that certainties are not justified. One does not offer a reason for them. I can imagine that one could draw a distinction between knowledge and certainty this way. But if so it would be premised on a philosophical analysis of knowledge - which isn’t Wittgenstein’s usual mode - and the idea that knowledge works only that way (ie that the analysis is a good reduction). Perhaps: that there is always an explicit justification for any knowledge claim. But it seems to me to be equally plausible to say that while knowledge is a standing in the space of reasons, not every knowledge claim is advanced on the basis of a reason and in some cases offering a reason if challenged would be sketching an almost entire world picture. What is the justification for denying the chronology of young earth creationism? Well it’s not any one compelling factoid. But still, I think we know that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old.</div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, I don't think that the non-propositional, ‘nonsensical’ reading of hinges works as a free standing response to any epistemological worries we may have. <br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Moyal-Sharrock, D (2007) <i>Understanding Wittgenstein’s On Certainty</i>, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan<br /></span><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com