Past and Naturalism

As a philosopher, I often think that I have some good arguments. Moreover, I find myself revisiting elements of my own faith when pressed into the corner. I cannot say for certain whether or not a full-fledged naturalism is the best way to go. In my previous Anglophone analytic experience, it was the ONLY way to go. I've complained that numerous times that people in their presentations and after parties wanted more acceptance from their philosophical peers, resulting in a need to legitimize the conceptual bag of concepts they used. As such, they speculated on naturalizing their concepts over drinks, and then all was settled. There wasn't much need for any other philosophizing since anything else other than naturalism and full commitment to Ockham's razor was the only way to go. In fact, this implicit commitment to naturalism or some type of physicalism is now the guiding norm so much that I find myself in the same climate that Husserl found himself in tension with psychologism.

I am not against a naturalism program per se, but I find the orthodoxy achieved as something of an illusory confidence, as if some philosophers no longer want to argue for their premises. To do so, I think would show that naturalism is not as sturdy as originally thought.

Philosophical Explanations

Like all my blog posts, this should be taken as an undeveloped intuition pump to get my ideas out there.

Call a philosophical explanation any conceptual description of human experience. Usually such explanations are causal accounts, they might be something like explaining how practical reasoning works in terms of desire-satisfaction, or they might be even more naturalistic in invoking some compatibility or subsumption in a physical science. The Churchlands do this with neuroscience, explaining what a mind is via concepts like a neural network.

I take it that philosophical explanations might be minimal with respect to what is invoked in explaining human experience. For some fellow pragmatists, they are devoted to a certain feature of "experience" that mitigates outlandish conceptual claims with real world concrete experience. This usually means a skepticism concerning a priori claims like a transcendental apperception in Kant for instance, or anything metaphysically essential. In this way, pragmatic explanations are also philosophical explanations, in that the theory/philosophical explanation in question is derived from our first being practical-historical beings.

Philosophical explanations have at least two trajectories I have encountered in recent philosophizing. I would not commit myself to saying these are the only two trajectories. Instead, I would only say these are possible formulations of the higher-order distinction between transcendence and historicity; there could be other formulations of this problematic elsewhere.

Transcendence is the quality of a concept to represent something that is beyond the immediate facticity of our socio-historic world. Phenomenology is often used as a defense of transcendence. For instance, Husserl's Logical Investigations are a defense of ideal objectivities in logic that cannot be explained by thinking of logical laws as laws of psychological science. It is a defense of the irreducible elements of logic. One might interpret Heidegger's early description of the structures of Dasein as a transcendent (This is contentious however).

Now, historicity is the quality of a concept to represent something only within the boundaries of facticity and the historic ontotheology that determines the threshold of our ability to understand/interpret something.

Philosophical explanations can pick out transcendent concepts like consciousness, noema, intentionality and then see how these explanations explain a variety of human experiences, or they can be historical in which the concepts become a hermeneutic level that articulates present understanding. The historic explanations work to point out the limits of understanding and often are seen as generating fictional problems because of surpassing or being trapped within the historical limit.

In the historic explanation, our concepts become instances of our historical threshold. It explains past movements or texts as being samples of the historic time that determines what they could have said. Descartes and the moderns could not conceive of nature as nothing but the totality of space-time coordinates given that they were determined by historical formulations of geometry and how Being was understood (Husserl's formulation of this problem preserves living subjectivity) This historical explanation subsumes the living-subjectivity of those authors and construes them as determined to imagine what they wrote given the operative historic understanding of Being at the time. Such an explanation invites many problems, among which I have already hinted it. It sees human experience as an articulation of the historical dimension through which they interpret their world, and nothing more. These are not people with a living-subjectivity trying to solve the problems they face in their current life. Instead, this means that the historic explanation equivocates the term, "explanation" since it can mean both the hermeneutic limit of what people can understand, or also the hermeneutic limit that causes people to believe what they do. It therefore explains causally and establishes the limit of what can be understood.

Next, the historic explanation relatives philosophy to the framework operative at the time, what both is the limit and cause of past philosophers and the content of what they have said. In this way, there is no genuine knowledge possible, but only knowledge at a historical time. It is therefore impossible to think that human beings have been confused about one genuine problem throughout philosophy. There is no transcendence of the problem of how the mind relates to the body even though we have been thinking about it for nearly four centuries. Such a claim could hold no water.

Moreover, and what I find very counter-intuitive is that these explanations deny that theory can be done at all. There is no genuine knowledge about how we ought to act, and thus ethics looses any way to prescribe action given that we could just chalk up normative advice to the current societal framework. No transcendence in moral knowledge means that nothing really has any normative weight and no culture has better practices than any others. Nazis were just articulating their moral understanding of their own culture in as much as I believe in a free press to hold a democracy accountable. This not only seems counter-intuitive, but a little bizarre with similar effects in logic. No transcendence means that there is no way to tell better viewpoints from others. There are no norms to good reasoning, but only the self-asserted ramblings of whatever is the historic zeitgeist at the time says is true. In effect, the historic explanation gives up in actively searching for truth, and this is its greatest weakness since in circular fashion it, too, is only true in that the historic explanation itself is true at the time it is articulated. That really gives us good reason to think that it itself is true.

It should be said that what post-Kantian philosophers and Husserl mean by transcendence is not the same as with science. Philosophers of the logical positivist variety wanted a transcendence per se, but they wanted science to replace the transcendent concepts they thought were nonsensical. In this way, we are still looking to describe human experience. It is unwise to give up that fight.

Kevin Mulligan On the History of Continental Philosophy

Below is my short reaction to Mulligan's online article about Continental philosophy.

I am skeptical that there is anything like Continental philosophy other than a convenient shorthand for job applications. For the phrase has never had any purchase with me since I have had and never will have anything in common with post-structuralists or psychoanalysts who are both supposedly an illustration of Continental philosophy. There are so many people grouped into the phrase "Continental philosophy", I find it offensive that anyone would lump so many competing philosophical positions into a phrase. It's like grouping, Russell in with Putnam or Tarski with Davidson without so much as thinking whether or not they have anything in common. It's always been a political term, a term suggested by others that do not want to bother reading "that stuff over there." It is exclusionary to the point of absurdity--absurd since those rejecting it most often know nothing about it (In the department hallway at Simon Fraser, a visiting lecturer called all of Continental philosophy "crap" and when I asked him what he read, he smirked and said "Nothing.") One should demonstrate a passing knowledge of its content if one is going to dismiss it.

If there is nothing really like Continental philosophy, then I find it decisively wrong that Mulligan would look to a literature review of Dilthey's work from 1884 and suggest this is the moment something like Continental philosophy comes on the scene. As a starting point, Mulligan wants it to speak as an origin that seemingly overtakes all subsequent "Continental" thought. In so doing, it suggests implicitly that Continental philosophy cannot work with science since the review in question is about Dilthey's suggestion that history should take the focus of analysis rather than thinking that philosophy should work with the sciences in much the same way that history and tradition become the focus of Gadamer over thinking that philosophy should always coincide its efforts with the natural sciences (A great essay demarcating this distinction might be Truth in the Human Sciences by Gadamer). Not all of Continental thought is a pure anti-scientism, but simply a tolerant enlargement that philosophy can talk about things within human experience and not always consult the natural sciences to do so. In fact, "Continental" philosophy can work with science. Much of Merleau-Ponty's research is as a child psychologist in as much as Husserl talked to many mathematicians and famous physicists at Gottingen (A great article detailing these famous contacts is Patrick Heelan's Husserl's Philosophy of Science). Moreover, phenomenology in its contemporary form is called a post-phenomenology where whatever you may consider it, phenomenology is being actively appropriated by either phenomenologists or philosophers of mind as a way to articulate notions about proprioception, embodiment and cognitive science (Zahavi, Gallager to name a few).

More importantly, Mulligan cites in Footnote 2 that his entire essay starts as an "accumulation of prejudices" in the cliches presented at the very beginning which "seem to me to be one and all true". He writes,

Continental philosophy is often held to have the following distinctive features; it is inherently obscure and obscurantist, often closer to the genre of literature than to that of philosophy; it is devoid of arguments, distinctions, examples and analysis; it is a problemarm "Ask me what I'm working on, and I'll reply with the the name of a problem", the Analytic philosopher will proudly say, "ask the, and they'll reply with a proper name": (a variant on this: Continental Philosopher to an Analytical Philosopher: "I'm a Phenomenologist", "I'm an Analytical Philosopher, I think for myself"). It is also, he will ruefully add, terribly popular, but, he will happily continue, mainly in departments of literature and in some of the human sciences. He might also add that Continental Philosophy came to prominence in the English-speaking world because it seemed to address issues that analytic philosophy had conspicuously fialed to address: the nature of textual interpretation, aesthetic questions, as well as a variety of issues in social and political philosophy. The fact that this one-sidedness had all but disappeared by the 1970s does not, he will have to go on to say, seem to have impeded the career of Continental Philosophy. 

If Mulligan allows for the possibility that these could be nothing more than the accumulation of prejudices in the very beginning of the article, then why continue to write this piece? It would seem that the bias overtakes what he said of the Continental distinction at the end, it might be a "spurious fiction" and despite his own observation of it, he continued on with the very prejudice he felt may have constituted his first efforts. This is the very same prejudice motivating how ruefully ignorant many Analytic philosophers are. I should say this is what happens to philosophy when you are so convinced that the problems you work on are more important than the historic connection to philosophy that Analytics actively pretend is not there.

Anyway, you can decide for yourself.

Adorno and Husserl

I'll be posting on this paper (entitled Husserl and the Problem of Idealism) Adorno wrote a long time ago. A friend came to me and we will meet to discuss it next week. I will post some results of that discussion here in a few days. Amazingly enough, it is in J Phil.

Intuitions and Ethics

I can't seem to hate conservative philosophers. If anything, they are my favorite type of conservatives, reflective and willing to engage in philosophical debate. In this post, Edward Feser takes issue with Dennett's intuition pumps and groups them together with moral intuition from ethics. It is the latter that concern me here. In this post, I show they are completely different from each other, and likewise do not represent the same methodology. He says,

But intuitions are also often appealed to in a positive fashion, as a way to support some claim or other in metaphysics or ethics. Hence we have John Rawls’s well-known appeal to what our “considered intuitions” about justice have to tell us. 

The two are entirely distinct since the intuition use, or appeals to intuition in ethics. His specific claim is what such a grouping cannot achieve objective understanding of morality. In his words,

As Alan Lacey notes in an entry on intuition in the Ted Honderich edited volume The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, “recently… the term ‘intuition’ has been used for pre-philosophical thoughts or feelings, e.g. on morality, which emerge in thought experiments and are then used philosophically.”

This is most regrettable. It gives the impression that ethics and metaphysics are ultimately subjective, which is – certainly from an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) point of view (which is my point of view) – not at all the case.

Primarily, I feel that when I claim a normative judgment is intuitive, I mean -- like Ross -- there is a self-evident truth that a mature and experienced person can accept. There is some moral claim about the situation we face, and that's what is normatively at issue for us. For the Aristotelian-Thomist philosopher, it is then only that the intuitions are about what morally face us, and it should also be noted that intuition used in the Rossian way doesn't refer to incorrigible pieces of knowledge either. The fact that we are bearers of intuitions about a pre-philosophical experience doesn't immediately infer that they are unreliably subjective either. It's just part of the overall explanation of our moral epistemology as to how we come to know what is moral and immoral. For Ross, our intuitions are left open to critical reflection and can be modified since they are prima facie justified only. To me, this sounds like Ross can account for the openness of practical wisdom requiring experience and maturity that an A-T would find plausible. To further push this thought, Ross was also an Aristotle scholar and translator of Aristotle's works. This is why I do not think that Ross demands much theoretical precision and realized that openness about moral matters requires humility when dealing with ethical matters--all the while using the word intuition. 

Moreover, Rawls appeals to gaining reflective equilibrium between our accepted moral intuitions and the principles we use to justify our notions of justice is not wrong. It is not a flagrant irresponsible attitude to try and gain coherence between the principles we think morality is undergirded by and the beliefs we have. An A-T philosopher would always start with the respected opinions of his day, and then evaluate whether they are true or false. That's just an Aristotelian modus operandi. Moreover, Aristotle does not overthrow tradition in much the same way that the word intuition comes to be used in the early Oxbridge ethicists. For Sidgwick thought that moral theory should also explain our common-sense moral beliefs, which are part of our tradition. This belief is shared by Ross as well. 

What might be suspect is coherence as a way to decide moral matters. It can seem very self-serving, even after someone has read Rawls, and Rawls is without the openness that Ross shares with Aristotle's phronesis. However, that is a post for another time. If I were to summarize, I would say that the modern use of thought experiments and intuition come from early ordinary language philosophers who thought meaning independent of our confusion in much the same way Feser thinks natural law theory provides rational grounds to accept the truth of a claim on apart from us. It is irresponsible to group together Rawls as an ethicist and Dennett's use of intuition pumps simply because it is the same word without paying attention the actual historic usage of the word itself. Where better to start than Rossian intuitionism? 

Post on Depth Psychology

I think this post is as good as it gets when it comes to analysis and the claims abstracted from historical authors. It's an interesting read, though I do worry about the reading of Nietzsche that centers around the will-to-power and wonder if the author is being too loose with Schopenhauer.

Depth psychology has also been called false consciousness in Marx, and false consciousness as far as I am aware was never an explanation for action inasmuch as it is an explanation for why we might find some emancipatory alternative to current practices. For this reason, there is a normative angle to why these thoughts are offered. It is not simply about a shared method between these authors (but that thesis of commonality alone between Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and Schopenhauer is part of the fun of this post at the same time). The author passes off depth psychology as a blanket program with much in common between a range of thinkers that only minimally share this feature. As such, I wonder if the danger of Strawman is lurking around the corner due to an attempt to ahistoricize these ideas from their historical moments. I would need more than the rantings of a Thomist (A. McIntyre) to substantiate these claims about these ideas.

Naturalism

Nature is a vast thing. For philosophers, the term "naturalism" has many versions. One might be a methodological naturalist believing that one ought to proceed under the assumption that science discovers natural laws while leaving alone ontological naturalism which states that only physical objects and their causal relations exist. A very strong naturalist might be adhere to both versions. In addition, one might consider any number of philosophical descriptive accounts as natural. I might defend a version of non-cognitivism in which I need the work of the emotions as does Alan Gibbard require remorse and guilt at the agential level. Other naturalists might be skeptical that such folk psychological terms really capture any understanding about how people are when they act morally. And the battle rages on philosophically.

Now, what is the point of going through the above motions (other than the really nice picture)? Well, I drop my hat and simply say that these questions have been on my mind lately. Moreover, this blog post goes nowhere but to document my confusions on the matter.

As some of you may know, I start with phenomenological description and proceed from there as a general rule of thumb. The rule is simple: philosophy must start with our lived-experience and whatever is given to us within experience provides a leading-clue as to what ontological level of explanations suffice for philosophy. In this way, I do not think that philosophy is simply preserving biases of unscientific understanding of the world. Instead, I think that philosophy ought to contribute to understanding our worldly experience. To many times in the past, philosophy has tried to pass off concepts that are justified apart from experience, which is namely a Kantian demand. Our concepts must arise from our lived-experience in much his inquiry started with the various points-of-view he thought were basic to human life: knowing, acting and judging. Apart from Kant, the moderns did not do this. Instead, they justified everything according to their basic belief in the epistemic position as primitively basic to human life. That's a little absurd, and shows how it is that modern philosophy with its focus to the epistemic position came to infect the development of analytic philosophy with the same basic belief (such a genealogical analysis should be forthcoming from me, but it is late. In truth, that's a book right there).

What makes naturalism interesting to me is how uncritically accepted as a position it is within mainstream philosophy, and where we are in ethics with respect to what is called moral psychology taking over metaethics. Let me speak to the first and then I will elucidate the climate of ethics in relation to psychology. An anecdote will help. I studied at an all analytic department, and found the same objection constantly wielded against Husserl---Husserl's transcendental idealism is an unattractive and unscientific position. Unscientific was code for "not natural enough". The question usually went: How is it that I could even read that "stuff"? Well, it comes from the fact that I want philosophy to say something more than trailing the coattails of the blind analytic adherence and reverence to the natural sciences. This can be gleaned from ethics.

Ethics is one of the few knowledges that preserves the first-person point of view; it preserves subjectivity to point to Kierkeegard. It talks about what tests we can use to guide our current deliberations, and conceptually describes what the good life might look like. It gives us a language to reflect on the issues of our own life, and the lives of others. Within ethics, naturalism is a dominant position for those describing things like practical rationality, moral epistemology and philosophy of action. All these areas inform the backdrop of what we might call moral psychology, which assumes naturalism implicitly and strikes me as just another reincarnation of the failed attempt to naturalize explanations about laws of logic as laws of psychology. Yet, instead of laws of logic up for grabs, it is the fundamental belief that we are simply objects in an overall chain of determined physical relations deciphered by the natural sciences. This gets us away from experience entirely. It is just another veiled attempt for the natural attitude to describe what should be described in terms of lived subjectivity. Of course, this is just a phenomenologist talking.

For these reasons, I may want to research a dissertation on the foundations of ethical naturalism, or at the very least write a historical genealogy tracing out the concept in its brief history. I bet I would find a less than judicious use of Ockham's razor throughout the history of philosophy, and more to the point if I paid attention to the history of naturalism itself, I would find that the efforts to naturalize normativity with respect to agency puts me at the very start of where the Oxbridge non-naturalists were just a century ago. We have come full-circle only to think that our science is better when, in truth, we forget that science is what Husserl calls "a life-praxis." Science only achieves its meaning for us since it is accomplished by beings with lived subjectivity. When we are so convinced that science can answer all questions philosophically, we privilege science over other forms of human experience and do not see the value in the artistic, literary and cultural productions around us. These, too, aid our understanding of the world--maybe more so than science ever could since they have no real way of corroborating with truth as the scientists want us to believe. Maybe that is true?! But, the point of listening to the arts and other humanities is to show something else--the humanities and the arts contribute to the understanding of the world for us in that they provoke from us meaning. Science can do that along with these very same things, but we must view them as one of the many tools we have to understand our world. We should not let our adherence to naturalism sway us differently.

Nussbaum on Banning the Burqa

Here is a good article about how one might reason about moral problems. Many times I am asked by my family and people outside philosophy what good reasoning about moral matters might look like. This is a review of common political arguments that don't really hold any water when put to a moment of critical reflection.

Nussbaum on banning the burqa. 

Leiter Headache Again

Apparently, Leiter just can't tell the difference between good Heidegger scholarship and bad Heidegger scholarship. In either case, here he recommends a blog post about Heidegger's philosophy. Interestingly, it's rather stupid post about Heidegger from a political theorist and International Relations scholar, not even a philosopher.

In terms of epistemic authority, this is like going to a Chaucer scholar in an English department for an exposition of Churchland's eliminative materialism.

So the cookie crumbles.

The Powers (Alleged?) of Analysis

I have been asking myself lately what exactly is it that I do. First, I have had sustained conversations over the last year of my Ph.D. with several distinguished scholars in the field, and I feel there is no clear-cut way to do philosophy. In fact, doing philosophy feels more eclectic everyday as I navigate the space of historical scholarship and problem-solving. Never the twixt shall meet, it seems. Yet, I want them to meet, I want them to have a sustained conversation with each other since I feel that is the only way this dreaded "Divide" between Analytic and Continental camps can ever be achieved. However, to do so, requires a constant philosophical reflection on method. My adopted strategy is to study Husserl, the most penetrating "Continental" figure ever since he talks about concrete lived experience. That's what is attractive about him. He gives a conceptual architecture to talk about the concrete structures of our lived-experience. A recent reading of a colleagues paper had this to say coming from outside the tension between Analytic/Continental divide. He writes,

...they are analytic philosophers, trained to believe that it is perfectly alright for a philosopher to lift whatever he or she likes and happens to agree with from any historical context, and use it for whatever purposes strike their present fancies, or more fairly, whatever seems most relevant to the problems with which they are occupied, however narrow those problems may be.

I do not know if this is fair or not. Part of me thinks that if past philosophers are in any sense like me, then some degree of "lifting" out of the text is philosophically responsible. This is because if past philosophers internalize the same activity, that is, they try to make timeless arguments to solve problems that face them presently, then we can also appropriate their insights insofar as we are trying to identify the best aspects of past philosophers to solve our current problems. However, this can be done too quickly and may lend itself to bad scholarship. Yet, I do not think every insistence of doing the above amounts to bad philosophy since it is what we might call analysis.

It is conceptual analysis, and it is the tool of the early 20th century ordinary language philosophers. I love Moore and Ross in this regard because they analyzed concepts of the good and right. Sometimes, I feel, articulating the phenomenological richness of these words; they certainly had at the very least "phenomenological tendencies." Alas, however, it is historically erroneous to identify conceptual analysis with phenomenological describing. I am digressing. To do conceptual analysis is to analyze the ordinary meanings of our concepts as they are confused in our language and to give some reflective attention to their clarification. This allows us to see more richely what exactly is the problem and if so, we may have to provide a solution to a problem. I will not count how many solutions suffice for philosophical problems (even counting that it might be the dissolution of the problem that ought to be an answer-- a favorite Derridian strategy). In the end, to do analysis involves several assumptions:
1. The confusion in our language reflects the conceptual confusion we face presently.
2. Philosophical reflection can clarify the extent to which this is a problem and then theorize solutions of all types of this problem.
3. In order for 1 and 2 to be true, it also must be true that the confusion we presently face can be picked out by analyzing the concepts we use and that these concepts are fixed in their meaning since we continually encounter confusion over their meaning and usage.

So, what is the real question with analysis as it is with all philosophy? We must become reflective of those moments in philosophy where we, philosophers, become mindful about the limits of philosophizing. At this moment, I am pressed to ask why can't we do philosophy within the immanence of our own lives? If I am faced with a philosophical quandary and I approach something as a problem, I am not being historically irresponsible by seeing that others have faced the same dilemma as me. Instead, I reflect and think about it for a long while in relation to my own experience and life. I know that others have thought about, for instance, "what exactly are values?" Moreover, if there are values, what does the ontology of the world look like? I know that neither common-sense, faith or science can take the reins solely on this question. I often think about this question and consider it a reflective moment in my life to arrive at an answer that best fits the evidence and self-reflection I bring to bear exactly on this problem presently before me. In so doing, I think this question cannot be satisfactorily answered from all options I have heard from ethical naturalists like Gilbert Harman or David Copp. I adopt some strand of moral realism, and this has followed from the strategy that assumed implicitly in 1, 2 and 3 above.

Now, if we think all of philosophy is a problem presently before me, then there is the danger of excess. We will convince ourselves that we can lift anything out of a philosophical text regardless of historical context. That I am sure is right about the quoted passage above. However, it is another thing to say completely that an entire group of people will do so without being historically responsible. Being a philosopher is also to live out one's life and experience the world philosophically. Our experience is richly historical, but does unfold presently. This is part of the problem really. We cannot reinvent the wheel with every problem, but there may be permutations of a philosophical problem that come to a special light in our day. It shoudld be right that we can then use analysis to find out the limits of our problems, and we need to do this in order to honor the previous historical contexts that allow us to have philosophical conversations. Futhermore, some conversations are richly historical while others are more to our moment. I cannot be sure which moment passes before me when I philosophize, but I think it is suitable to both be mindful of the problems and how history has shaped our ability to face the problem before us. Perhaps, again, this is why there is a division between problem-solving qua Analytics and historical-textual analysis qua Continentals. It would seem the most sensible that a synthesis of these two tendencies to be a more sensible option in philosophy than the exclusion of one over the other.

Critchley's New Column, Leiter and What I Am

So, I get a headache anytime Leiter, a talented philosopher of law, goes off the handle and insists on a select few "real" philosophers. He's done it with Judith Butler, calling her a bad writer -- as compared to his colleague the celebrated Martha Nussbaum. Sometimes, Leiter does it with the Derrida and Levinas scholar, Simon Critchley. Now, Mr. Critchley has in some fairness become the Dennett of more popular philosophy, though I think Leiter with his naturalist inclinations would disagree with the level of contribution Dennett makes versus Critichley. Critchley recently wrote a book on how philosophers have died. After perusing the text at Chapters, I put it down. It need not be held in my hands again. Now, Critchley has a column with the New Yorker called The Stone.  Critchley has flown the nest on this one as a fellow blog friend puts it here.

But, let's get back to my headache. Without any "real" argument, Leiter calls Critchley a "bullshit artist" and thinks that "shut the fuck up" is the right response to Mr. Critchley. Again, he is without taste in his demeanor towards Continental philosophy, or what in the past he has called Party-Line Continental philosophy. This is not really justified, but just a deeply ingrained bias. Critchley is an accomplished Levinas scholar in his own right. Yet, to see this accomplished status, someone might have to actually consider writers like Levinas and Derrida philosophers. And that's just it. Leiter and the rest of the Anglophone world think that we're trying to pull the wool over their eyes with obscure terms and ambiguous phrases. If a plainly educated person has no chance of understanding what philosophy you write, then you might as well not write the damn thing--that's their attitude. And, how many times do you know of an averagely educated person that can understand Russell on referential meaning, or what exactly non-cognitivism means for Alan Gibbard? They pretend as if the level of clarity they have achieved corresponds directly to what is valuable in philosophy, and that's a line I just can't ever buy. Moreover, this provides a good example to say exactly why.

These Leiterites don't want to hear that the structure Levinas is trying to describe defies description in the language typical to epistemological, metaphysical and ethical language, or that Derrida's criticism of Western metaphysics relies on a non-demonstrative strategy. On the first, Levinas is trying to capture exactly how others are given in my experience of them, yet typical conceptual schemas fail to capture this givenness. In this way, Levinas tries to overcome both what Husserl and Heidegger have also said on this issue. The move to demonstrate Derrida's points would succumb to the very thing he wants to avoid, namely, that meaning is univocal in any conceptual system.

Now, I am sympathetic to Levinas since he is a way into moral phenomenology, and am skeptical that Derrida's project could ever achieve success. However, I will at least give their due, and make my way through their texts. I have no problem with philosophers being rude. I am rude at times, and Socrates was fairly rude to Euthyphro. Euthyphro wasn't a philosopher, however. The consistent blog-bullying of Leiter amounts to philosophers chopping their own legs off. We are already so under-appreciated in a world that doesn't value art, history, literature -- let alone philosophy -- that I don't think we can forget Davidson's principle of charitability. There is a level of respect we should have to each other, even if we disagree with the scope of methodology, project and analysis. As a phenomenologist, I have nothing in common with eliminative materialists, but I would never call the Churchlands abhorrent for their view on matters of qualia, intentionality and Husserl. I'd argue they are wrong, but would do so in a way befitting the Churchlands as philosophers of mind.

As for Critichley's entry on being a philosopher, I really have nothing to say. I've always preferred Husserl's notion of a "perpetual beginner." When we take up reflection, we begin anew. We are finite, and can't re-invent the wheel with every new philosophical question. We can become mindful of what philosophy means for us and how we are related to it through our common philosophical history. One wonders why Critchley began with the Thracian maid and Thales? What does that anecdote say about us other than philosophers are so overwhelmed by their awe they don't notice wells at their feet?

Ironically, Critchley has become the face of the public intellectual as public as Socrates inaugurated his practice of philosophy. He has a column like Socrates challenging normal people in the agora. In this parallel, one can only hope that people will find some transformation when reading philosophy.

Commentary on Jason Stanley's "Crisis in Philosophy"

Below are my comments to Stanley and others, awaiting approval from Insidehighered.com. His post is revealing of the deeply entrenched idea that philosophy can only be about inquiries from the perspective of a epistemically-centered subject. 
--
I want to address the weird interpretation of Positivism from Stanley's post. I earlier commented with an ambiguous phrase, the politics of reading, and now wish to give that phrase a little more bite. First, I explain how it is that positivism is still exclusionary implicitly, and secondly, this can be found within the "story" Stanley provides.

It should be noted that positivism has internal to its own texts a disavowal of metaphysically queer properties like values of right, wrong, beautiful. In essence, anything not corroborated by the principle of verificationism at that time was deemed to consist of poetry. Any philosophy not in line with the principle of verificationism and compositionality is utterly worthless, ambiguous and vague. For these opposite philosophers that oppose this attempt at clarity and rigor exemplify the worst of those they were fighting against, those that " played the role that philosophers are supposed to be play in society – challenging powerful social forces that appeal to mysticism and faith for support." This further excludes any philosophy that would elevate either mysticism, faith or areas not easily confirmed by positivism's scientistic commitments. In this way, it is still exclusionary of what experiences we can talk about that do not conform. If it cannot be stated clearly and, studied scientifically, then one should not even think it can be talked about, let alone philosophized about. Thus, one can already see this commitment makes one suspicious of what one can even read that is philosophical.

Moreover, what makes positivism and largely Analytic philosophy its best and worst IS the continual belief that all modes of inquiry assume the centrality of an epistemically-centred subject. It is not surprising that Stanley sees Zizek and Nietzsche as deviating from the modern tradition of being in line with Descartes and Spinoza. The modern period can be identified as the emergence of the impersonal subject that must justify its epistemological and metaphysical commitments. 

One can do philosophy in other ways not in accord with this overall implicit story of how philosophy must be about the epistemically-centred subject. For instance, there are types of experiences that do not easily conform to this epistemically-centred subjectivity. I am not only a philosopher, but I am a historically mediated subject. I live in a lifeworld that has been sedimented to think in terms of the natural attitude in such and such a way. I am connected to others through communal rituals, religion and politics. In this way, there are strands of philosophy that analyze our lived-experience in ways that attend directly to these experiences while not construing these as problems ahistoricized to an impersonal epistemically-centred subject. That's where the real disconnect with the other humanities is (and speaks to the success of Continental philosophy outside analytic circles in other humanities).

Stanley's pedagogical philosophy also follow this strange line of reasoning--construing the identities of students as holistic worldviews (however incomplete they are to the university student freshman in the intro course), and these belief systems are further rendered along the same line of tradition he reads positivism into, a preserving the continuity from Descartes onward. He offers them another belief to replace their own, to put them into cognitive tension with the self-reflection hopefully modeled on the manner he implicitly assumes is at issue philosophically, so much in fact that once again, the inevitable elevation of science and reason commences. Stanley writes, 

"Logical Positivism, in its embrace of the transformational power of science and reason, does not mark a break with traditional philosophy. Rather it is a continuation of it."

Membership, being part of a tradition, is no means to justify that tradition over others as exemplary. Traditions themselves give no warrant for their own beliefs anymore than my insight that philosophy should pay attention to lived-experience of our concrete human life (if this indeed constitutes a separate tradition). This is why I read Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas personally. It is rather strange that we should be so ingrained and socialized into a tradition, that our preference and even how we read ourselves into the tradition of philosophy is, at this point, revealed as a politics of reading, a cultural outgrowth of methodology. This is revealed also in a certain Brian calling continental figures as anti-philosophical theorists. Is it anti-philosophical to question long-held assumptions in the history of Western thought, and to expose these long-held assumptions? 

I think not. If that held as well, then when Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment denounced that "meaning ain't in the head" as the tradition of philosophy had held, then semantic externalism would never gotten off the ground. It's just that this mode of questioning didn't abandon the story of the epistemically-centred subject that drives much of Anglophone philosophy currently. As such, Heidegger and Derrida can be read as questioning long-held assumptions in Western philosophy. That's very philosophical to do, and that is NOT DEGENERATE by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone that thinks otherwise cannot stand to interrogate the very foundations they appropriate when engaging in philosophy. Philosophy is always a questioning of itself and its limits while also addressing basic concerns that repeat throughout its history. 

So let's be clear what I have claimed. Stanley's construal of what counts as philosophy is itself a historical bias of placing first and foremost the concerns of the epistemic subject. This can also explain how he identifies Positivism within continuing from Descartes onward. Thus, it can be seen that it is a legitimate concern contrary to Stanley's claim (and other supporters) that there is something anti-philosophical about philosophers that a) question this leitmotif of an entire tradition and b) look to other forms of experience outside thinking that philosophy should always be continuous with the natural sciences. The refusal to assent to either a) and/or b) is the result of a historical and methodological priority that is at best an uncritical "politics of reading." 

Phenomenological Descriptions of the Humean Practical Reasoning Enthusiasts

Here is a recent post I have slightly contributed to. It is one of those examples in ethics where I think Husserlian phenomenology (as well as what Don Ihde calls post-phenomenology, the type of phenomenology that integrates itself with disciplines beyond itself like social sciences or what Dan Zahavi does with Husserl and cognitive science etc.) could be used to do some good. I know I have advocated this type of thing before many times here, nor do I know how I would proceed on this problem either.

Any thoughts?

FSU Religion Conference

I will be giving a paper at the FSU Graduate Religion Conference. I am presenting on Irigaray and Kant. It should be real fun.

The conference itinerary should be located here for some time. These things have a habit of dying out after the event, but lingering on departmental servers for quite some time.

Some thoughts on Internalism

The debate between reasons-internalism and reasons-externalism is about a few things: what is the nature (ontology) of moral propositions (here proposition means moral judgments, or moral reasons I act on) and that ontology of values tells a whole bunch about morality in terms of its function, of its source, and explains the moral language behind those propositions. For instance, if I claim that universally "Cheating on academic tests is wrong" and I am an internalist about this example, then I am committed to something like the following:

1. There is a moral reason that is binding for everyone.

2. The bindingness of this moral proposition is right for anyone to do regardless of their motivation to abide by it.

3. The source of normativity a la externalism is apart from motivation, and likewise apart from subjectivity. Therefore, it requires a metaphysics that accounts for moral reasons as a mind-independent property in much the same way we commonly think of perceptual properties of an object. Some candidates might be:

a) Moral reasons come from God's commands
b) Moral reasons are woven into the fabric of nature from God, and we can add to this moral law
c) Moral reasons are disclosed in our experience and like Aristotle, normativity is found in the exercising of potential properties to actual fulfilling properties.
d) Moral reasons are apprehended by our intuition in much the same way we directly apprehend mathematical truths.
e) Moral reasons are perceived like color properties. I think this could be naturalized to even say something like, I have evolved the capacity of a moral sense to apprehend altruistic behavior.

4. Some internalists might claim that motivation inheres in what it is to have a reason in the first place.

China Advertising

To Whomever keeps coming to my blog and posting stupid advertisements. I received a virus from accidentally clicking on your posted link. This stupid practice, I hope will stop. I lost one computer, and accordingly would seek damages if I knew who you were. As such, my blog is now moderated. Comments are still set to the public, but if it continues, I will require membership.

CT and the Insurance Industry

Here is a PDF I found on the insurance industry in the state of CT. I don't know how accurate it is.

Call for Public Option Support

What does it mean that the government will take over health care?

A suspicion of big government is cited by libertarians and conservatives alike. But, what does it mean? The implicit commitment is that we are less free if the government has more authority to enforce a set of provisions that affect all our lives. Citizens are less free the bigger the government. However, this is all smoke and mirrors. This is only meant to further the interests of those capable of already flourishing in a free enterprise system. Moreover, this type of fanatical skepticism impedes people and legislators to often come together and address a massively huge injustice, like health care. We should put our skepticism a different way.

I propose the more just a society, the more free the people since morality protects everyone impartially from the predilections of strife and injustice that plague human beings. We are a vicious species to each other, and the law and our civil institutions keep us in check. As Aristotle said so long ago, the object of government is to inculcate good habit so that we can all flourish. The ultimate end of our society is human happiness (by happiness, I mean flourishing). Are we to think that the United States government is any less responsive to the needs of its citizens? The United States, also, has the end of happiness in mind when it governs; otherwise, I would never vote if it weren’t true. Our Congress just needs to be reminded of the basic duties of morality.

If the bill passes the Senate, it will meet the public option in the House bill in conference committee. We should support the public option in health care reform since it will benefit everyone to have free accessibility to health care needs that the insured take for granted. I have lived in two countries where the public option is a reality and found it very comforting to know that no matter what happened to me, I could still have at least my most basic medical needs met. I had this right as a visitor to the UK and Canada while a graduate student. You would think that the most basic rights of health care could be achieved in the wealthiest country on earth.

Health Care Reform

Ladies and Gentlemen,

With the death of any public option, I am skeptical the health care reform bill will do much to solve anything. In a telephone conversation, I called Lieberman's staffer and called him "a prick and a coward" (had it out with their staffer). It probably wasn't the most productive call. Still, I can't help and wonder why Republicans and this independent in the Senate are worried about the cost. They are fine supplying a military budget for two theatres of war ($70 billion), and they are fine with a budget of $515 million in the early part of this fiscal year.

Consider this statement from his website

While I objected to some provisions that I believed would unnecessarily add to the national debt, raise taxes, or endanger the fiscal solvency of the Medicare program, there is much that is needed and worthy in the core bill that I support.

So, this is the only thing I could find on his website as to why he wouldn't support a public option. His worries are all financial, better put with the phrase 'financial solvency'. This seems either really concerned to the spending or a completely vague rhetorical trick. It's a little ambiguous given how much we are shelling out in stimulus spending (Lieberman voted for HR 1 Economic Package which allocated 317 billion and increase tax credits on 2/13/09), and military budgets. And the unpopular observation by me is the American public does not pay enough in taxes like other contemporary Western democracies that all have public health care as a basic right.

What's more is the ethical argument. Whatever the cost financially, the public option is a right, and should be fought on these grounds alone. Rights are secured by the people and respected in the practices of governments. At least, one hopes this is so. Moreover, if a large portion of the population is either under-insured or un-insured, then their suffering prohibits the flourishing of our society. So, the philosopher in me has not really unpacked these two intuitions, but at the very outset, I would defend a public option along deontological and neo-Aristotelian grounds.

One could also find the backing of our Founding Fathers when Jefferson says that "Freedom and happiness of man are the sole objects of all legitimate government" and he also said "The most sacred duties of governments is to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." This talk of justice and duty are exactly what is needed, and a public option does just that, allows for everyone to access basic health care needs. The problem is that we think in terms of cost. How much will such accessibility cost me (the individual) in taxes? The problem is to think like that is already to think outside the commitments of morality and justice. Once we put the burden and cost before us to see if it is prudent to do something, we have already succumbed to the same basic instrumental rationality that befit Wall Street moguls to maximize what was beneficial for themselves at the expense of an entire nation's economy. The massive injustice of both health care reform and the economic meltdown turn on those that maximize their own benefit at the suffering of others.

Morality requires we take the interest of others "to heart." To live a moral life is to be committed to the simple fact that our actions must take others into account. Even if Republican assessments about the cost are right, do we dispose of the very option that meshes with the need to address an injustice. Lieberman's talk of financial solvency can be solved. It's called stop supporting Israel, war and a huge ass military that fights unnecessary wars.

Holiday Break

So, I will stop posting for a while, and take a break for the holidays. I will post a series of links of upcoming call for papers with cool Continental departments shortly. Of course, these are just re-statements of Continental Philosophy Blog, but the more people post the CFP, the more calls will get out there. I will be taking up Nussbaum, Aristotle and a host of commentaries on the Nichomachean Ethics. New problematics in Kant's ethical writings and Levinas will appear on my radar.

Take care and have a good holiday break.

Carbondale Chasmite!