A Renewal of Philosophy
For centuries, Western philosophers have grappled with profound questions. How do we know what we know? When are we justified in claiming we know? Are there universal moral truths? Does the physical world exist independent of human perception? If it does, do we perceive it directly, or only via representations in our minds? Are the mind and body two distinct substances, or are they one physical thing? If they are separate, how do they interact, but if they are identical, where can we locate consciousness in someone’s brain? These problems have yet to be solved, and perhaps they never will be. Yet, at the same time, science made great strides in answering questions about the physical world. Can we finally say then that philosophy has failed — that it is dead? In this paper, I will argue that if the purpose of philosophy is to answer the profound questions, then yes, philosophy has failed. But I will also suggest that if we reconsider its purpose, then philosophy is very much alive.
Here at the University, criminology and nursing students are required to take at least one philosophy course about ethics in their respective fields. Their professors traverse thorny ethical issues: Is plea bargaining moral? Should there be mandatory sentences for serious crimes? Are police sting operations fair? Should we allow assisted dying? Is abortion murder? To the disappointment of the students, the answers to these problems are no more forthcoming then are the centuries-old profound problems of philosophy exemplified above. Many leave class confused and frustrated, because they were expecting answers. What good is a class in ethics if they return to their legal or nursing program without the answers which will guide them through the maze of dilemmas they will face in their careers?
According to Russell (63–66), the following claims are true: There is no objective payoff for studying philosophy. Philosophy is not a means to an end. Philosophy dos not directly produce knowledge. Though philosophy is the great mother of sciences, it leaves it to the other sciences to find answers — because if it were to produce answers, it would no longer be philosophy. Indeed, said Russell, the purpose of philosophy is not to find answers, but to better ourselves as people by helping us clarify questions; accept uncertainty; examine our beliefs, convictions, and prejudices; remove ignorance which prevents us from eventually finding answers to problems; and to help us achieve personal liberation by developing compassion and kindness. If Russell was correct, then it is no wonder that criminology and healthcare students don’t find immediate answers to their problems; yet it is the hope that philosophy helped them take small steps towards becoming clearer thinkers and better people.
Russell believed that the ambiguities, misunderstandings, and other obstacles to clear thinking were the result of the inadequacy of grammar. Propositions should either be true, or false — not indeterminate. But what is the truth value of a statement such as “The present of King of France is bald,” considering that the present King France is a non-existent entity. How can something that doesn’t exist have a property; and moreover, how can we determine the truth value of such a claim? Russell sought to clean up sloppy language by translating it into logical form, a superior “language” which explicitly elucidates the intent of the deficient grammar, which is in this case, “There exists one and only one present King of France, and he is bald.” If we apply Russell’s logic, we have a conjunction, A + B. Unless both conjuncts are true, the statement is false. Since A is false, we now have successfully determined the falsity of the entire statement. Russell cleaned up language, at least with respect to nonexistent definite descriptions. But using a similar strategy of determining the logical intent behind grammar, Russell’s theory of descriptions solved various classic puzzles of grammar presented by Frege and Strawson[1].
Russell’s student, Ludwig Wittgenstein, initially seemed to share Russell’s belief that the best strategy to clean up philosophy was to clean up language. Both Russell and Wittgenstein sought to explain the way language works behind grammar, but they employed distinct strategies. As explicated above, Russell sought to expose the underlying logic, and reduce the world to logical statements about simples[2]. But Wittgenstein took a different approach: His picture theory taught that those objects — and only those objects — which could coherently fit together in a picture were part of the world. Anything else was nonsensical, and one could not possibly encounter nonsensical states of affairs composed of things that did not fit logically together (Tractatus ). Russell explained how sentences referring to nonexistents could have meaning by reducing such sentences to anatomical logical statements, as described above. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, stated that nonexistents, so long as they were logically possible (the present King of France is possible, but a round square is not), were facts of the world. They may be true facts, or false facts — but all logically possible states of affairs are part of the world as described by language.
But this is where Russell and Wittgenstein parted ways. Whereas Russell may have succeeded in inventorying the world of anatomic facts, Wittgenstein embarked on a much more radical project: To refute that anatomical facts have significant meaning, and moreover, to refute widely accepted metaphysical beliefs because such metaphysical theories do not fit into pictures. For example, beliefs about morality, good, bad, and God are out the window — such things cannot be pictured.
Wittgenstein was not done yet; his project was not to lead us into nihilism then walk away. He pointed us in a new direction by offering an alternative method to understand life which did not rely on metaphysical theories (indeed, it precluded them). This was the world of Realität — the present moment of here and now which cannot be converted to linguistic descriptions nor metaphysical concepts. Indeed, the present moment is all we ever have. No sooner than we attempt to conceptualize, philosophize, moralize, or otherwise judge an experience, that moment and that experience are already gone. Realität is a mystical place, where one might find meaning in life, yet in which there is no possibility of conceptualizations.
Equally as radical, Wittgenstein argued that all language is public. Language games give meaning to people’s lives in the context of culture. At first, this claim might seem innocuous. But a deeper understanding of this claim reveals that if there is no private language, then although sensations are private, culture defines all concepts. This means that one’s self identity is contingent upon public language. Without public language, in principle, a person would have brute sensory experiences but no cognitive understanding of the meaning of those experiences. This was a radical claim that the nature of human cognition is contingent and cultural — rather than necessary a priori.
To review up to this point: Russell understood that the purpose of philosophy was liberation, and sought to eliminate the confusion of language by seeking a universal language of logic. Wittgenstein elucidated how language works, and thought it worked just fine for its intended purpose — making an inventory of facts and communicating socially using language games — but that meaning in life would not be found in language. Towards the goal of finding meaning, Wittgenstein lead us into the mystical present-moment of Realität.
For those who still cling to logic and metaphysics as being relevant and meaningful, enter Derrida. Derrida’s project was to question the implicit biases in philosophy, and to deconstruct logical centrism — the naïve devotion to logic and language. We have a bias in believing that “good” is better than “bad,” and “reality” is preferable to “illusion.” We erroneously believe that aporia — confusion and doubt — is to be avoided. Widely accepted laws of logic such as LEM — the law of excluded middle — are false according to Derrida’s concept of differance[3]: Logical centrism failed to recognize dynamic flow based on relationships of opposites. Indeed, A implies not A. Love and hate, for from being mutually exclusive opposites, have something important in common: They are both strong emotions. Logical centric philosophy, forever seeking primacies of meaning, has failed to recognize the symbiotic relationship of opposites. The laws of physics reveal potential energy, which is energy that resides somewhere between existence and non-existence — again, challenging the law of excluded middle[4].
Derrida pointed out that communication is laden with difficulty because language is polysemic. Words have multiple meanings, and these meanings are constantly in flux. Written language is out of the writer’s control (and the reader is not present at the time of writing), therefore there’s a contextual disconnect such that written material can be interpreted by readers in ways not intended by the writer. Moreover, Derrida attacked the “classical assertion” that performative utterance refers to something outside of itself, because language transforms the very situation it describes (355). With ambiguities such as these, it seems that language itself may have trouble being a tool of effective communication.
Quine attacked the empirical philosophers’ distinction between analytic and synthetic claims as dogmatic. He stated that the proposition “No bachelor is married,” presumed to be analytically true by definition, is not so — because definition “hinges on prior relations of synonymy” (261). But Quine points out that for words to be synonymous they must be interchangeable salva veritate[5]. If a statement such as “All bachelors are unmarried men” to be analytic, the words “bachelor” and “unmarried man” would have to be interchangeable. But said Quine, “Truths which become false under substitution of ‘unmarried man’ for ‘bachelor’ are easily constructed with the help of ‘bachelor of arts’ or ‘bachelor’s buttons . . .” But even if we ruled out alternate definitions of “bachelor,” interchangeability salva veritate would not be an assurance of cognitive synonymy, which Quine said would be necessary for analyticity. The general terms, “creature with a heart” and “creature with kidneys” are alike in extension, i.e., they point to an identical creature — because hearts and kidneys can only exist together. Thus, they are interchangeable salva veritate. But they are not cognitively synonymous. Therefore, in an extensional language, cognitive synonymy and interchangeability are distinct matters. That bachelor and married man point to the same thing does not mean that they are cognitively synonymous. If they are not assured to be cognitively synonymous, we can question whether “All bachelors are unmarried men” is analytic. Quine also attacked the second “dogma of empiricism”, viz., the verification theory of meaning, which states that the meaning of statement is its empirical verification condition. (267) The dogma here is that according to itself, the verification theory is meaningless, because as a theory it has no empirical verification condition.
Rorty dealt a final insult to centuries of philosophy. He argued that all schools of philosophy which try to establish truth correspondence to the natural world are bankrupt. Rorty called such ill-fated attempts at correspondence “Mirror of Nature” (370). Rather, Rorty advocated a pragmatic theory of knowledge wherein scientific and metaphysical “truth” are recognized as merely contingent vocabularies which are employed by social convention for their usefulness.
If the philosophers I have referenced have influenced us, we are likely in states of aporia — knowing less than we thought we knew when we started this inquiry. But remember Russell’s claim — that philosophy has no answers, only questions. Derrida and Quine warned us that if we settle on dogmatic answers to the questions, we are likely fooling ourselves. Wittgenstein offered a promising approach to our current confusion: The meaning of life is to be discovered, here and now, not in metaphysical theories but in Realität. Perhaps we are witnessing the death of dogmatic philosophy and even of metaphysics itself. Philosophy should be reborn as an authentic quest for personal liberation, freedom, and meaning — free from questionable logical and metaphysical claims which, even if true, would not give us meaningful insights into life. Centuries of dogmatism imprisoned us; as Wittgenstein stated, his aim was “To shew the fly the way out of the bottle” (Investigations 165). But paradoxically, the philosophical arguments of Russell, Wittgenstein, Derrida, Quine, and Rorty are themselves just more piled-on theories — but these theories may be like ladders. Once we’ve reached the sky, ladders are no longer needed — indeed, they are only obstacles, and should be removed.
Works Cited
Derrida, Jacques. “Signature, Event, Context.” Baird, Forrest E. and Walter Kaufmann. Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.
Donnellan, Keith S. “Reference and Definite Descriptions.” The Philsophy Review 75.3 (1966): 281–289. Print.
Lycan, William G. Philosophy of Language: a Contemporary Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Quine, Willard Van Orman. “Two Dogmas of Empericism.” Baird, Forrest E. and Walter Kaufmann. Twentieth-Centurt Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.
Rorty, Richard. “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.” Baird, Forrest E. and Walter Kaufmann. Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.
Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1912. Print.
Stace, W. T. “Science and the Physical World.” Crumley II, Jack S. Readings in Epistemology. Mountain View: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1999. Print.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. “Philosophical Investigations.” Baird, Forrest E. and Walter Kaufmann. Twentieth-Century Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.
— . Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness. London and New York: Routledge, 1974. Print.
[1] The referential theory of language holds that names and descriptions refer to things in the actual world. But this gives rise to certain puzzles of identity, references to nonexistents, negative existentials, and substituvity (Lycan 19–26). Russel’s theory of definite descriptions offers plausible methods of dealing with these puzzles by extracting the logic behind the grammar (Donnellan).
[2] Simple refers to the smallest reducible objects. But the concept of simples came under attack by Quine for placing an artificial limit on reducibility (Quine 271).
[3] Derrida intentionally misspelled the word difference to illustrate that words are difficult to interpret without context. He gives us context for differance, otherwise we would not know its meaning.
[4] Arguing for idealism, W.T. Stace used the indeterminacy of potential energy as an argument against the objectivity of science (620).
[5] Two expressions are said to be interchangeable salva veritate if the substitution of one for the other does not change the truth value or meaning of any context in which either expression appears
��=��=
