Paradox

"A situation arising when, from a number of premises all generally accepted as true, a conclusion is reached by valid deductive argument that is either an outright contradiction of or conflicts with other generally held beliefs. Such a belief is both perplexing and disturbing because it is not clear which of one's well entrenched beliefs should be rejected while it is plain that in the interests of consistency some modification must be made." (Flew)

A.W.Moore, The Infinite

"One of the paradoxes of thought about the infinite, then, is that there are reasons both for and against admitting the concept of infinity...A possible solution to this paradox would be to admit the concept of infinity, but to acknowledge...that we cannot do anything with it. That is, we cannot get our minds around the infinite, or discuss it, or define it, or come to know anything about it, or say anything coherent about it. For if we attempt to do any of these things, we automatically abrogate it--because of our own finitude--and become embroiled in contradiction. Any attempt to define the infinite, for example, is an attempt to bring it within our conceptual grasp, but, given our own limitations, we can only bring within our conceptual grasp what is itself suitably limited...Consider: if we cannot come to know that we cannot come to know anything about the infinite; if we cannot coherently say anything about the infinite, then, in particular, we cannot coherently say that we cannot coherently say anything about the infinite. So if the line of thought above is correct, then it seems that we cannot follow it through and assimilate its conclusion. Yet this is what we appear to have done. We appear to have grasped the infinite as that which is ungraspable. We appear to have recognized the infinite as that which is, by definition, beyond definition...What we are seeking then is nothing less than an account of our own finitude, and of our relation to the infinite."

Paradox of awareness

The paradox of awareness can be traced back to classical Greek philosophy and it is at the very center of Cartesianism. Simply put, we know what we know but what we know is not necessarily knowledge. Therefore, we do not know what we know. If we say that part of what we know is not knowledge, then what the hell is it that we know if it is not knowledge? Either we know or we do not know. If we perceive and if we think, if we have meaning in sum, we have knowledge. What other definition of knowledge is available? Meaning and knowledge are the same. Yet there can be meaning that is not knowledge.

This is what Brentano saw clearly and so started a chain of argumentation that has been going on to the present. Dummet wrote: "Intentionality is naturally to be taken to be a relation betweeen the mental act, or its subject, to the object of the act: but how can there be a relation when the second term of the relation does not exist?...This was, then, the problem Brentano bequeathed to his successors." If the self is implicit in all mental contents, then mind cannot be characterized as relational and there is no problem. Brentano characterized mind as "intentionality". All thought is about something, hence the equivalence between intentionality and "aboutness". Aboutness implies relation: thought is relational. Brentano had difficulties with the being of thought, because presumably thought can include propositions that are false and propositions that are neither true nor false, although all are meaningful (Dummett, p. 127). For the same reason, Brentano fell into the paradox of thought being relational about propositions which are false, which meant that mind/thought was a relation to itself, as in awareness of awareness, which is not possible.

In Frege the paradox of awareness is expressed in the distinction between sense and reference. In an extensional context, the sense of sentences is the same as their reference. However, in an intensional or oblique context, sense is not equivalent to reference. The intensional or opaque context Frege had in mind was thought. In this context the logical principle of substitution simply collapses. Husserl answered Brentano's dilemma by arguing for mental entities that have a reality different from the reality of the world, but are just as ontologically weighty. Husserl solved the problem of the extrusion of thought by separating sense from language and making noesis the source of noemata, i.e., meaning. The knowledge of meaning is attained through epoché. Since noemata apply to all thought, regardless of whether it has an object or not, then thought is always relational: it is a relation between noesis and noemata. These entities are responsible for our knowledge not just of things but of those mental presences that have no correspondence in reality. In sum, these meaning-giving mental entities provide a true form of knowledge which however is not exactly like the knowledge of reality. Thus we could have knowledge that was not knowledge in the strict sense of the word. But does this do the trick? Russell for one I don't think would have been satisfied with such an ambiguous argument. For Husserl there was knowledge of mind. For Russell knowledge of mind did not conform to logic and was not knowledge.
 

The characterization of mind as relational implies a self. This characterization of mind is at the root of the definition of self as propositional attitudes. Apparently it was Russell that took this step, and if so, it is from Russell that much of contemporary philosophy of mind derives. Wittgenstein then came along and said that knowledge of mind is knowledge of language except the language that refers to mind. But you cannot keep a good mind down, and mind came back later. The paradox of awareness figures importantly in the thought of Frege and Russell. Wittgenstein tried to ignore it through his famous linguistic turn. But it comes up again in Quine, Davidson, Searle, and others. Cognitivists are too concerned with how we actually think valid thoughts to give much thought to error.

The solution to the paradox of awareness does not lie in ignoring it. Husserl has a very complex and obscure account of the meaning-giving function of mind. But basically he invents a lot of terms and avoids coming to grips with central mentalist type-concepts such as perception, memory, and logic. Perhaps what he calls noesis is supposed to encompass these cognitive processes, but if so he did not bother going into the nitty-gritty of cognition. Searle deals with it in his critique of the analytical concept of the intensionality of mind, but his solution is circular: he argues that mind is no more intensional than propositions about perception and that propositional attitudes are as real as the objects we see. This means that statements to the effect that "I believe" or "I think" are as extensional as descriptions of things. But in fact we do have universal consensus on the reliability of perception whereas there is no way to determine whether specific individual claims about belief or thought are true.

Russell distinguishes between propositional attitudes and propositions. This distinction goes back to Brentano and the concept of a cognitive act between an implicit knowing self and the object of which it is aware. The characterization of mind as a dual relation took hold in analytical philosophy--the part of it that does not reject mind outright--and has gone on to the school of functionalist cognitivists. However, there is no reason internal or external to suppose that cognition is dualistic. And if in fact cognition expresses itself in propositions, it is absurd to suppose that there is another entity besides the proposition as the expression of awareness in mind. However, to give the devil his due, it is from the concept of propositional attitudes as expressed by Russell that it is possible to understand the paradox of awareness, for it is by positing propositions without their propositional attitudes that you can obtain Fregean and Russellian linguistic paradoxes. Such paradoxes have a solution if we rid ourselves of the presumed dualism of the meaningful or cognitive act.

All propositions necessarily involve reference to bases and to contents. The bases correspond to the propositional attitudes. But they are not separate from the propositions themselves. They are a necessary reference of all propositions. Hence, they are contained in the propositions. Propositional attitudes necessarily entail a specific self. And if all propositions belong to a specific self, then all propositions are necessarily specific. Why can't propositional attitudes entail an "object-self"? The concept of object-self implies that cognition is subject-less, and this is impossible.

Do propositional bases also include cognition itself? Propositions are not necessarily linguistic, but they do require a source and that source can only be cognition. But this creates a difficulty. The definition of contents is the meaning of propositions excluding the reference to bases. But if we include in bases the reference to cognition, then the contents of propositions cannot refer to cognition, which is absurd. The contents of propositions must be able to refer to cognition. How could they not? We have to posit then a dual reference to cognition within all propositions: a necessary reference from bases and a possible reference in contents. The reference to cognition from propositional bases is the reference to the causes of propositions. The reference to cognition from contents is the reference to token theories of cognition, i.e., in our case, basic-cog's, cog-processes, and so on.

If contents can be about cognition, why couldn't they also be about propositional attitudes? No reason. Contents can refer to propositional attitudes as results of cog-processes
~Bases refer to propositional attitudes as such, i.e., as necessary implications of propositions. The propositional reference to bases is necessarily valid, but the propositional reference to contents is not necessarily valid. The propositional reference to bases can be explicit or implicit, but the propositional reference to contents is necessarily explicit. When, even though Tom knows that Cicero denounced Catilina, he ignore that Tully denounced Catilina, we do not have a paradox. Tom in fact knows and ignores and these being propositional bases are necessarily valid. However, the conjunction Cicero denounced Catilina and Tully denounced Catilina, being contents of propositions, can be and in fact is wrong.

It can be argued that the original source of the paradox of awareness is the Cartesian "cogito". "Cogito ergo sum" but "cogito" can lead to error. Therefore, "cogito" does not necessarily to point to "sum". It only points to itself and this can be true or false yet still be knowledge.

Frege solved the problem of the being of thought (if he actually considered it as such) by distinguishing between thought and ideas, and positing that the access to thought is given by language.

In the part on aesthetics in the CPR , Kant sketches something like the paradox of awareness. The contents of experience are imbued by time and space. But the contents of experience are not necessarily true or knowledge. Knowledge is experience and judgement. The conditions of judgement make objectivity and knowledge possible. The "Analytic" addresses the conditions of judgement. The subject knows time and space intuitively. Yet all expressions of time and space are theoretical. Hence, even though time and space are undoubtedly knowledge, it is a knowledge that is inevitably controvesial. This seems to imply that knowledge must be expressible, but such is not the case, because I know what I see without ever being able to express exactly what I see, or for that matter hear or feel or smell.

Parallax

The change in the perceived position of an object in relation to other objects from the movement of the observer. The further from an object the observer is the greater the parallax. There is no parallax at all if you are standing in front of a building.

Parochial

In theory of mind, cognitive theories that only apply to human beings are called parochial

Perception

Perception is the ability to elaborate sensations into recognizable mental pictures of objects. This elaboration occurs in such a way that it can be described in propositions about qualia. Qualia include light, color, outlines, and depth. Although perception is image-like, it is also propositional. There is no advantage in specifying perception as imagic as opposed to its definition as a mental proposition. To say of perception that it is imagic, is like saying that it is perceiving. The claim about the propositionality of perception is reinforced from the distinction between perception and individual acts of perceiving. Even if we could describe individual acts of perceiving as imagic, the rules or the process whereby these acts arise can hardly be described as imagic.

The enunciation of the laws of perception is of course not the general process itself of perception. Since perception cannot be inferred or even understood from the physical study of the senses, the descriptive awareness of perception, with perhaps some experimental support, is the nearest we come to the knowledge of perception itself. In theory of mind expression is equivalent to representation. By way of contrast, the description of the liver cannot be considered to be the liver itself. The function of the liver is neither felt nor seen in normal conditions. The explanation of the functions of the liver are not the functions themselves. The description of the eye does not reveal its function. But awareness encompasses the function of the eye. Assuming awareness to be propositional and expressible, the expression of the act of seeing or representing can embrace the function of the eye. In the liver the expression of the organ and its function is never the liver itself. In the eye the function is the expression. Since it is possible as in photos to simulate instants of perception, it is arguable that the function of the eye can be differentiated from the act of seeing, but the seeing of the photos themselves is the expression of their representation and representation is still representation. Perception is as physical as DNA or the liver functions. The description of the liver is not the liver. But there is nothing beyond the liver than its physical description. The liver cannot be aware of itself. It is not necessary for the liver to be aware of itself in order to fulfill its function. But the eye fulfills its function in awareness and only in awareness. It may be possible to construct a model of the eye, even to the projection of images on a screen, but the model is valid only to the degree that we perceive it, so that our faculty of seeing itself would be the justification of the model. The act of seeing of the model is the justification of the model. We do not have to be a liver to understand a model of the liver. Seeing a model of the liver does not add one drachma to the function of the liver. It is the awareness of the function of an organ by the organ itself that explains or justifies the propositionality of perception. We needn't describe every instant of perception for perception to be propositional. The fact that every instant of perception involves awareness and can be described is what makes vision propositional. Awareness is always propositional.

However, it may be that there are no rules of perception at all, just as it is possible to argue that there are no special rules of language-learning. Perception is logical in various senses. It respects the axioms of logic, especially the principle of identity. If I start seeing double, I know that my perception is going haywire. The signs of perception must allow necessary deductions about other perceptions, e.g., if I see a foot crossing a corner, I logically expect to see the rest of the body next. Nothing perceptual can go against logic, or function without logic. The perception of specific objects implies types. Specification and typification or generalization are logical function.

Strictly speaking the work of perception is recognition and ultimately recognition is only possible from memory. Sensations enter the senses. How are they interpreted in such a way as to yield perceptions? For perception to arise there must exist the propositional types of the objects that we perceive, and these types exist and can only exist in memory. Consequently, it is memory and the logical operation of finding equivalents in memory of combinations and sequences of sensations that yield perceptions. What in this process justifies the concept of "laws of perception"? In fact, such laws if they exist would be intermediate steps between distal stimuli and recognition. How could certain laws or steps do the process of binding sensations and recognition without the necessary participation of memory and logic working simultaneously? Since these intermediate laws or steps can be accounted for by memory and logic, the laws of perception appear to be superfluous to the process of perceiving. We could claim that there are physical laws determining how stimuli are received in the sensory organs, e.g., that could explain colour-blindness, but these laws and explanations do not in themselves explain our awareness and recognition of perceived objects. The laws of perception, therefore, are nothing but a supposition from the stance of isolating specific cognitive functions. This stance was made explicit initially in Chomsky's modular theory of the learning of public, communicative languages.

According to Frank Jackson in his book Perception (1977) sight is not of an external object but of a mental object. Between a stimulus and perception there is an intermediary cognitive process which entails rules of perception. Unlike Fodor, who posits the psychophysics of perception, Jackson conceives of perception as a result of representation. But even supposing Fodor's thesis involving neurons, the description of any cognitive process is tantamount to rules. Whether physical or representational, perception is a rule-guided process.

There is no awareness of perception as opposed to perception itself. The recall of past perception, as opposed to continuous or present perception, is introspective awareness or awareness. Perception involves continuous recall. If visual perception and memory were to be isolated from each other, the results would probably be a flat assemblage of colors. The least we would experience would be disorientation. The loss of memory is well known and it is called amnesia. In amnesia a person has trouble recognizing things previously perceived, such as faces or places. The amnesia of perception would consist in the functional loss of the rules of perception. How could we see or recognize anything even with normal vision in the absence of visual memory? There is a condition known as agnosia which approximately simulates this "possible", i.e., a person sees without recognizing. Therefore, we have to conclude that vision, normal or abnormal, involves recall. Recall in this case need not involve awareness. We are not aware of the operation of the rules of awareness. But it does require a "place" for the storage of the rules of perception and that place is what is called mind. Additionally, without recall of previous perception we could not have the continuity of perception. If recall, for instance, were skipping instants of perception, we would be falling down stairs or missing elevators or crashing our car into other cars and so on. How do we know that perception is reliable? Not because somebody tells us that it is, nor because we do reliability tests. We know it is reliable because we know it is. Our knowledge is based on an universal consensus about cog-processes that began eons ago.

Sterelny, The Representational Theory of Mind (1990)

"Theorists like Ullman and Rock have taken perceptual processing to be a species of inference, and hence perceptual representation as complex and mediated by many intermediate representations."

Phenomenalism

(1) "What we know is dependent upon the activity of consciousness. The reality of an external, physical object is based on its being perceived by someone."
(2) "Reality is the totality of all possible conscious experience" (Peter A. Angeles, Dictionary of Philosophy (1981)

Assuming phenomenalism (1), each awareness knows that it can only be absolutely certain of its representations. Nothing exists without awareness except awareness itself. Assuming awareness in a machine, the same reasoning would apply, but since it is a "natural awareness" (NA) that "installs" awareness in a machine, the machine's claim would be wrong. It is not awareness per se that makes existence but autonomous awareness.

Phenomenalism makes machine-awareness paradoxical. Machine-awareness is a paradox insofar as it cannot but claim that nothing exists beyond its awareness and that claim would seem to be wrong. Given certain science-based technologies, e.g., the quantum chip, artificial intelligence (AI), as good as natural intelligence (NI), is obtainable. However, unless a battery is devised that would maintain AI alive like NI, AI would still not be equivalent to AI. But if AI is possible there is no technological argument against long-lasting, AI-sustaining power or energy sources.

There is a further paradox. The awareness of things means that awareness cannot claim that there is no existent without awareness, and phenomenalism (1) falls. My not being aware of something cannot be a denial of its existence because that something could be the object of another awareness.

Phenomenalism (2) is self-contradictory. There is no "totality of all possible conscious experience". There is only individual specific awareness. If phenomenalism falls, then the machine-awareness paradox is groundless. This implies that, under any set of circumstances, machine-awareness can be awareness of other awareness.

The strongest argument against phenomenalism is that, even though we can only be absolutely certain of our representations, there exists a consensus among humans that being is not a function of any specific awareness. This consensus is part of the implicit, universal consensus about knowledge, which can be argued from the origins and survival of life forms, but the practical exigencies of everyday life provide endless specific and general arguments against the validity of phenomenalism.

Phenomenal and noumenal

Kant distinguished between the representation of things (phenomenon) and things in themselves (noumena). Awareness therefore is phenomenal. The phenomenal is lived experience ("vivencial" in Spanish).

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is the name of Husserl's method of philosophizing. It is a form of rigorous or demanding introspection. The key to phenomenology is bracketing or epoké. Since existential philosophy places no necessary restrictions on statements about mind, it is said to be phenomenological.

Philosophical psychology

(A) There is philosophical psychology and there is just plain psychology. For example: whereas Brentano is PP, Wundt is JPP. But no matter how hard you try it is impossible to distinguish the two ideas through the means used in formulating propositions in each of them. What do differ are the degree of abstraction in the concepts they employ, e.g., intentionality in PP; notion and emotion in JPP. Brentano and Husserl, whatever their pretentions--and Husserl's were incommeasurable--do not differ from JPP in the method employed and the foundations of their respectives knowledges.

(B) Descartes was the initiator of philosophical psychology. Cartesianism gave impetus to both philosophical psychology and psychology proper. But in the 19th century, philosophical psychology and the strictly psychological study of mind went their separate ways. Philosophical psychology claimed its own territory, which was delimited in the work of Brentano, Meinong, and Husserl. Husserl's influence carried on in existentialism, but this tendency became detached from philosophy of mind. The psychological study of mind developed on its own into different tendencies and theories, all within the same epistemic field.

Philosophers

Plato: ethics, epistemology, ontology, politics, the structure of reality

Aristotle: knowledge or the entire structure of reality

Hellenistic: ethics, epistemology

Lucretius: the structure of reality

Augustine: theology, history, epistemology, the structure of reality

Boethius: theology, ethics

Plotinus: ontology

Anselm: theology, the structure of reality

Ockham: epistemology, mind

Thomas: knowledge or the entire structure of reality

Roger Bacon: ontology, epistemology

Francis Bacon: epistemology

Hobbes: politics, epistemology, mind

Descartes: mind, epistemology, ontology

Locke: mind, epistemology

Berkeley: ontology, theology

Hume: epistemology, mind

Leibniz: ontology, mind, epistemology history, the structure of reality

Kant: epistemology, ontology, ethics, history, the entire structure of reality

Hegel: epistemology, history, politics, law, the entire structure of reality

Schopenhauer: ontology, mind

Fichte: ontology

J.S.Mill: ethics, politics, mind, the entire structure of reality

Comte: epistemology, history, ontology

Marx: economics, history, politics

Brentano: mind

Meinong: mind

Kierkegaard: theology, ethics

Frege: epistemology, mind

Dilthey: epistemology

Nietzsche: ethics, history, aesthetics

Husserl: mind, epistemology

Bergson: mind, history

Moore: ethics, epistemology

Russell: epistemology, ontology, mind

Wittgenstein: epistemology, language, mind, ontology

Carnap: epistemology

Harman: epistemology

Hempel: epistemology

Heidegger: ethics, history, ontology

Sartre: ethics, politics, ontology

Ayer: epistemology

Derrida: epistemology, language

Merleau-Ponty: epistemology

Austin: language

Quine: epistemology, language

Davidson: epistemology, ontology

Ryle: mind

Searle: language, mind

Putnam: mind

Dummett: epistemology, ontology

Fodor: mind

Dennett: mind

Evans: mind

Peacocke: mind

Chisholm: mind

Philosophy

The definition of philosophy is to be found in the history of philosophy, or conversely, the history of philosophy is the definition of philosophy. By extension of this idea, the validation of philosophical ideas is not to be found in their individual or specific justification per se but in the consensus of history.

One of the main definitional traits of philosophy as defined in the history of philosophy is the recurrence of thought. This stems from the fact that philosophical propositions have no object reference. Hence, philosophy is ultimately self-justifying. In philosophy we can only feel connected or we can only touch bottom in history and through history.

The history of philosophy as the definition of philosophy implies the concept of vox historiæ. Within the history of philosophy we discover the concept of the recurrence of philosophical thought, which comes up time and again in the ensuing arguments.

 It is possible to speak of valid philosophical propositions /? In what sense or senses? To be simplistic about a highly complex philosophical issue, controversial philosophical propositions can only be validated from history, but this does not mean that they are easily or necessarily validated from history. Since it can be argued that the definition itself of philosophy can only be made from history, the "historical standard" for the validation of propositions is particularly apt in the case of philosophy. In fact, it can further be claimed that the best argument for vox historiæ (VH), or the actual specific propositional theory of the historical validation of controversial propositions, is the history of philosophy.

Austin on philosophy (from Hacker): "...in the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the place of the initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous: from time to time it throws off some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well-regulated, progressing steadily towards a distant final state. This happened long ago at the birth of mathematics, and again at the birth of physics: only in the last century we have witnesses the same process again, slow and at the same time almost imperceptible, in the birth of the science of mathematical logic..." (p.173)

Philosophy is about reality and being, awareness and knowledge. The simplest way to show this is by elimination: there is no other discipline of thought that has the definition of these concepts as its proper goal. They are, consequently, in the province of philosophy. Is philosophy then the residual of what other areas of intellectual justification reject or do not care about? This can hardly be the case for there was philosophy before there was science, so it cannot be that philosophy got what the others discarded. If anything, philosophy led the way for others to carry on in certain areas and for philosophy to concentrate on its special concerns. If anything there was a process of distillation or decantation of the basics or fundamentals of philosophy. These basics or fundamentals are implicit in all sciences and all scientific attitudes, but philosophy makes them systematically explicit. Thought in itself about fundamental concepts and without reference to conventional philosophic disciplines is philosophical, not specifically logical, ethical, or whatever. This is the most basic answer to the question of what philosophy is and does: philosophy deals with the most fundamental and abstract concepts. We mentioned being, reality, knowledge, and awareness. This short list is not meant to be exhaustive but indicative. One thing that philosophy does not contain is truth in any conceivable sense of this word.

What is the history of philosophy? What does it reveal? How can we characterize it? A simple description would be that it is a structure, even a narrative structure, exhibiting changing agendas which determine broad and far from discrete stages or cycles. Philosophy itself would then be the continuing stream of speculation on the agendas in the history of philosophy. Is there a "logic" to the history of philosophy? The concept we want to explore here in connection with philosophy is taken from the history of art where movements appear not out of nowhere but according to rational "patterns", e.g. mannierism and Baroque from High Renaissance "classicism"; impressionism from academicism; post-impressionism and abstractionism from impressionism; and so on.

The history of art does not contain logical principles proper to itself, and neither does the history of philosophy, or history at large. But history in general is rational: it cannot flaunt the principles of logic, but it can only be interpreted from rational principles, which are the result of the fusion of logic and experience. That the world has causes but that it does not follow the one cause-one effect rule of logic, opens all these possibilities:
--A --> A is not likely but it is possible
--A --> ~A is more likely, and since art never stops, ~A implies:
--A =/=> B/C/D/E/etc.
--A --> B/C/D/E/etc.
Despite the diversity of possibilities, all successions are related in a rational manner, which, apart from constants, e.g., the elements of painting, includes carry-overs and all manners of residuals. The rationality of successiveness is a constant in all history, but it is particularly marked in the history of thought, hence in the history of philosophy.

Having argued for the above propositions--rationality of the history of philosophy; philosophy is not science; it is not about truth--we are in a position to make certain positive deductions from the history of philosophy. Since the philosophical tradition contains only a few fundamental themes, it is possible, and necessary for our explanatory purpose, to discuss: (a) philosophy as a series of fundamental metaphors, perhaps even as "signal moments" of experience; (b) philosophy as recurrence. Am I saying that no new agenda is possible, that philosophy is ended and all it can do is repeat itself? Does philosophy advance or retreat? There are areas in physics which could conceivably submit to metaphysical speculation, in fact some astrophysical theories sound like metaphysical speculation. Especially, the agenda of metaphysics is susceptible to new formulations and it could still have important social consequences.

Philosophy is not residuary. Philosophy is a not residual comprising the unknowable and the unsolvable. For one thing, the agendas of philosophy are still valid, because whatever their "un-susceptibility" from the start to verifiable or universally accepted answers, they respond to basic, tenacious, or important questions about human experiences. Metaphysical speculation may not count on the proof of verification and/or prediction and extrapolation, but there is a touchstones for it, which is vox historiae. This should be absolutely pellucid. However, philosophy does deal with concepts that are held in common by all disciplines and philosophy, whatever agendas there have been or will be, will always be about knowing, being, and doing.

Unlike science, philosophy does not provide specific answers to specific questions, and what it says is never true. As the study of the natural world in so far as it clears a path for science, philosophy self-destructs. Philosophy ceases to exist once it starts stating specific truths. Therefore, philosophy is never self-evident, in the sense, for instance, in which government is self-evident. We ask not the why but the how of government, but, even though philosophy is as "true" as government, we always have to ask the why of philosophy. Since philosophy itself always asks the why-question, then philosophy is the discipline that exists and functions by questioning itself, even for the reasons for its own existence. Therefore, philosophy is circularity. Philosophy is the study of the circularity of awareness and thought, and any effort at philosophizing must commence by enquiring for the grounds of philosophy: What is it? How does it come to be? What does it pursue? And how does it go about its business?

If philosophy is not a quest for truth, the consolations of philosophy at least appear to be self-evident, even if people get on with living without them. In other words, philosophy seems quite distant from existential concerns. This is not to say that the problems of existence disappear simply because we get on with it. The neurotic stumbles from existential crisis to existential crisis. Through reason the philosopher too faces "metaphysical horror": he discovers nihilism. John Doe occasionally glimpses nihilism. We die a little each day. If I were a black in a white society, I would have to confront the daily denial of my humanity. Reality reveals finitude. Thought is beset by scepticism leading to nihilism. And behaviour always manages to suggest the free will/determinism issue. We cannot escape rationality and rationality invariably leads to the irrationality of non-being, of doubt, of human weakness and vulnerability. Evil and destruction seem to cut an arbitrary swath through existence. Existence per se--as awareness, time, and so on--seems to be devoid of meaning. Existence reveals nihilism. Existence, time, awareness, etc., are ultimate realities and therefore beyond final and total comprehension by humanity. The specific attempts by philosophy to disarm nihilism are subjective and controversial, but they all have in common the struggle against nihilism. Hence, philosophy as the quest for meaning is the affirmation of being. Philosophy as the quest for meaning, as the struggle against nihilism, has always existed and will always exist.

Philosophy is an effort to transcendence. The idea of the philosophical affirmation of being is imbued with circularity and it remits us to the question of the grounds of philosophy, i.e. to the why of philosophy, to ultimate questions, and especially to the way philosophy goes about its business. The only way to stop circularity is with foundational statements. Philosophy then is the will to philosophize as a quest for the properly foundational. Foundationalism is invoked to counter the circularity of thought in the search for meaning. Foundational statements are justified/justifiable when they result from thorough rational analysis. It could also be said then that foundationalism lays the basis for coherence: that it provides the building blocks for coherence. Coherence is weak reason. Foundational statements are the strong rationality that makes coherence strong. They are then valid statements, but in saying this I know that I cannot be certain that such is the case. Therefore, we are not solving any metaphysical problems with foundationalism: it is only a recourse that we have in order to proceed with our thought.

Philosophy is more or less superfluous. Nihilism in the form of the circularity of thought creeps in and says: "But you still have to get on with it, and all your philosophizing is useless, because you will get on with it whether you can or cannot make a good case for meaning." Humanity does not have to comprehend ultimate realities in order to get on with it. Individuals just go on living and take care of their bodies and occasionally give a cheer for democracy. Humanity, in brief, always gets on with it. All three--John Doe, the philosopher, and the neurotic--get on with it. So why philosophize? The philosopher turns circularity around and says: "I affirm the will to philosophize". The persistence of philosophy can only be explained as the will to philosophy. Philosophy is superfluous and at the same time inevitable: it always resurfaces, stakes its claim, makes itself heard. It is therefore absolutely necessary. So then what does philosophy mean? What does it do? What is the point of philosophy? Whatever it does or does not do, whatever it may or may not mean, whether or not there is some point to it, philosophy seems superfluous and necessary at the same time: it is as basic as story-telling which may be why story-telling is often used as a metaphor for philosophizing.

La filosofía nunca estuvo "íntegra" en el "mundo" antes de ser "expresada" por los filósofos. Ni posteriormente salió íntegra, como Palas Atenea, de la cabeza de alguno de ellos. La filosofía se ha ido formando a través de la historia. De Aristotles se puede decir que sistematizó a conciencia el pensamiento filosófico, pero no lo hizo para la eternidad, ni la "eternidad" le susurró nada en el oído. Por ende, a la definición misma de lo que es filosofar habría que buscarla en la historia del quehacer filosófico.

Por una parte, esta tesis es debatible, e.g., por cierto realismo filosófico, pero por otra parte, es susceptible de justificación argumentativa. A simple vista parece inasediable, en cual caso bastaría para sustentarla con refutar a sus refutadores. En el supuesto de que sea necesario defendarla positivamente, hay varias manera de proceder.

Una manera sería hacer una historia general de la filosofía e ir señalando los momentos en los que entran ciertos temas a la agenda filosófica. Pero esto sería como tratar de definir a un elefante con el tacto. En todo caso, sería un proyecto de ambiciones descomedidas.

Otro procedimiento consistiría en poseer de antemano la agenda filosófica e ir con ella a la historia general de la filosofía para identificar los momentos en los cuales se fue confeccionando. Pero este procedimiento presupone lo que se quiere demostrar. En el primer procedimiento supuestamente se parte de cero. En el segundo, se supone que ya el primer procedimiento se ejecutó, y deja sin resolver si se ejecutó bien o mal.

Hay una tercera manera, que consiste en escoger un tema específico del pensamiento filosófico y tratar de precisar su historicidad, vale decir, el momento en que toma contornos precisos, sus antecedentes, su evolución posterior a su aparición, etc. En esta formulación, "tema específico" puede igualmente referirse a tendencias, movimientos, argumentos, etc. De esta manera, es hasta posible que se pueda llegar a poner en tela de juicio la validez de algún tema filosófico, e.g., el tema de la filosofía de la historia. Pero si utilizando este procedimiento se justifican históricamente ciertas proposiciones concretas sobre el pensamiento filosófico, se podría posteriormente argumentar, casi en forma mecánica, que la manera apropiada de proceder para definir lo que es filosofía es a través de la historia de la filosofía.

En estos argumentos hemos estado pensando en filosofía occidental, pero igual son aplicables a todas los modos culturales de filosofar.

Philosophy and language

All of what we have done so far--definition of fundamental philosophical concepts and purely rational derivation of the fundamental categories of philosophical thought--implies necessarily the existence and the use of language. This means that we always arrive at philosophy from previous accumulation of knowledge. But the philosophical spirit is Socratic: it never receives givens without examination. And therefore to philosophize involves a critical encounter with language.

Humanity created language over time. Language is also, then, a historical production. Language is the summum of human experience. The creation of language by humanity consists in the external concretion of meaning. Language is a reflection of mind as intentionality. Since the experience of humanity includes philosophy, then language encompasses philosophy. But the relation can be inverted. Philosophy emerges from the interpretation of the experience of humanity as embedded in language. This is not something that can be said of the sciences of nature. In order to philosophize it is necessary to accept the divisions and the distinctions that language makes in our experience about knowing, being, and doing. In fact, our experience itself, even though based on memory, logic, and so on, is also a product of language, of our principal means to categorize reality and to express ourselves. Even if we could invent a language to deal with reality, the language we invented would not be as rich as the language we learn because of the cumulative character of the language of experience. The philosophical turn towards language is biconditional with categorized reality. Since language encompasses the philosophical experience, philosophy can be said to be the exploration of certain areas of linguistic competence.

Aristotle often makes no further claim than that he is using or defining words in their accustomed usage. Kant takes some abstract concepts with a customary or conventional sense and redefines them. Heidegger actually combines terms to refer to concepts for which he finds no expression in ordinary language. Most of thought, in fact, consists in defining terms and then making sure that such definitions are not inconsistent. This is the case of the Nichomachean Ethics , where Aristotle takes certain terms, such as happiness and virtue, and subjects them to what amounts to a semantical exploration. John Locke's philosophy consists in the systematic definition of psychological terms, especially those that are related to knowing. Hume's discussion of the unity of self is another instance of how language leads the way, and in general Hume's philosophy can be considered to be an exploration of the meaning of certain words and certain expressions. In his study of the metaphysics of morals, Kant tries quite explicitly to make his thought conform to the implications of language. He goes as far as to claim that even a hardenes criminal must admit the claims and the justification of morality, which he has scrupulously derived from what he considers or describes as popular philosophy, hence the way people implicitly believe and express their beliefs. The concept of so-called folk psychology fundamentally refers to certain terms that we use to characterize our inner states. The entire ordinary language philosophy at Oxford was built on the proposition that the exploration of language use as a carrier of more than "literal meaning", can be the source of philosophical knowledge.

The way language contains the categories of reality can be illustrated with this passage from G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind (1949/1963): "I have fallen in with the official story that perceiving involves having sensations. But this is a sophisticated use of `sensation', or the verb `to feel'. We ordinarily use these words for a special family of perceptions, namely, tactual and kinaesthetic perceptions and perceptions of temperatures, as well as for localisable pains and discomforts. Seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling do not involve sensations, in this sense of the word, any more than seeing involves hearing, or than feeling a cold draught involves tasting anything. In its sophisticated use, `sensation' seems to be a semi-physiological, semi-psychological term, the employment of which is allied with certain pseudo-scientific, Cartesian theories. This concept does not occur in what novelists, biographgers, diarists or nursemaids say about people, or in what doctors, dentists or oculists say to their patients. "In its familiar, unsophisticated use, `sensation' does not stand for an ingredient in perceptions, but for a kind of perception. But neither, in its sophisticated use, does it signifiy a notion contained in the notion of perception. People knew how to talk about seeing, hearing and feeling things, before they mastered any physiological or psychological hypotheses, or heard of any theoretical difficulties about the communications between Minds and their Bodies."

Philosophy and science

Is philosophy science or proto-science? Or is it totally separate from science? Validity can be necessary or probabilistic and philosophical knowledge is far from being necessary, which is the case of science. However, science starts as hypothesis formation and this is also probabilistic. Claims for philosophy as proto-science are based in part on the hypothetical character of some philosophy. This can be said of Aristotle and it can be said of Descartes in relation to psychology, which was mainly a philosophical discipline until the 19th century. Philosophy as science can also be found in Democritus, Lucretius, and Locke. Leibniz is perhaps the modern paradigm of the philosopher-scientist.

The problem with philosophy as proto-science is that some of the problems it deals with are those that concerned the first philosophy, so that it can be argued that philosophy is about unsolvables and that this is why one of its defining characteristics is recurrence. If such is the case then philosophy is neither science nor proto-science and that in the best possible light it has been proto-science only accidentally. So what then is philosophy about? Philosophy is about fundamental issues such as knowing and being. Its method is logic. Philosophy is metaphysics, including ontology. Yet if it is about unsolvables and recurrences then it is nothing. But this fails to take into account that if it is recurrence it is something and that it is probably recurrence which validates philosophy. We take from philosophy what we need. Each epoch does the same. This implies a basic universal philosophy and we know that this is not so if only from the realism/idealism discrepancies. All we can say is that recurrence involves twists, that these twists are important, and that it does not do to underestimate so thoroughly the role of philosophy as proto-science.

Philosophy and truth

Truth-criteria are inapplicable in philosophy. However, they are applicable to philosophers, to their works, and to some extent also to the history of philosophy. The only conceivable application of truth criteria to philosophy would be in the negative sense of what philosophy can say and not say, what it can claim and not claim as valid. This was ultimately Wittgenstein's final objective in life.

Philosophy of history

Philosophy of history addresses the constants of history. Historiography is what Collingwood calls res gestae. Underlying all philosophies of history is a teleological belief. The belief that history is a piecemeal affair is inimical to philosophy of history. Historiography can be the basis for philosophical speculations, but historiography need not take sides in the debate. The further development of philosophy of history must be based on at least these arguments: (1) the mainstream/backwater metaphorical distinction; (2) the "unification" and Westernization of the world; (3) the consequences of the Holocaust; (4) growing social openness; (5) the history of science.

Philosophy of language

(A) The underlying presupposition in all philosophy of language is that always something is either implied or absent from utterances over and above the utterances themselves and their "conventional" reading. Therefore, one of the principal questions that philosophy of language addresses is that of the efficacy of language as an instrument of knowledge. Some philosophy of language even goes to the extreme of questioning that there is anything resembling literal meaning. The basis of this and much other questioning of language is its ultimately conventional, as opposed to logical and objective, character. The meaning of words does not proceed from definable causes, e.g., why not flub for chair?

(B) There have been in our century various branches of philosophy of language in the sense expressed in (A). The most renowned of these branches are semiotics, structuralism, and deconstruction. They all have in common the analysis and often the critique of expressions in quest of implications. Semiotics is concretely the study of language as signs. Structuralism is a form of meaning holism. And deconstruction is very thorough often critical explication de text.

(C) As opposed to linguistics, which is the specific study of any public, communicative language, philosophy of language is the study of language in itself, and especially as a reflection of and an approach to mind. According to Wittgenstein, e.g., mind is nothing but its linguistic expression. All propositions of language were valid objects of philosophy of language except linguistic propositions about mind. Hence, philosophy of language was also a philosophy of mind. The way of language to thought is not easy. Memory is the necessary support of thought. Yet language tells us nothing whatever about memory. So how can language even commence to embrace thought? Furthermore, language without independently functioning thought is devoid of attribution and meaning must be taken on faith rather than on the basis of a real cogitating entity.

(D) Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1953)

"Thinking is not an incorporeal process which lends life and sense to speaking, and which one can detach from speech."

 Gregory Currie on Gordon Baker, Wittgenstein, Frege and the Vienna Circle (Blackwell) in TLS, February 17-23 1989, p.163

"Any theory which describes the relationship between language and the world must be standing outside language."

"The overall metaphysical [view] of the relationship between language and reality lies outside our grasp, for it lies outside language."

In Frege language is the repository of meaning, but only in the sense that language expresses thought and thought is what ultimately possesses meaning. Language receives meaning from thought, but language is the necessary means to discover the relation between thought and meaning. Therefore, finally, in Frege semantics is philosophy of thought in the sense that there is no study of mind other than the study of meaning.

Assuming then that in the Vienna Circle the axis of meaning has shifted from thought to language, since language implies truth conditions, then meaning is equivalent to truth: only true propositions make sense. Since knowledge and truth are equivalent, then epistemology and semantics must also be equivalent.

To get as close to truth as possible, Frege, Tarski, and Quine propose the application of metal-languages to object languages. This does not mean that they necessarily talk or write in formulas, for it is understood that the same language can be both a meta- and an object language. To achieve his purpose in the field of numbers, Frege introduced the use of quantifiers into formal logic. Tarski hit upon the definition of truth as propositions that can be stated without the truth predicate. Since meta-languages are used to clarify or justify meaning, their use implies, again, the meaning/truth equivalence.

Quine introduced a variant on these fundamental ideas. For him meaning derives from context: it reflects language holism; it is itself holistic. This leads to his doctrine of the denial of synonymy and encourages scepticism on all but scientific and mathematical questions. Quine's answer to his own scepticism--itself however also doubt-generative--is the improvement of our powers of reasoning. The implication here is that epistemology can be reduced to a version or form of psychology. Nevertheless, from Quine's obsessive quest for clarity of thought through logic and mathematical logic, it is possible to attribute to him also some form of the truth/meaning equivalence. Following Quine, Davidson implicitly accepts that to know is to understand. For J. Fodor meaning derives from an innate mental language which functions through the application of a truth-rule: meaning arises to the extent that our mental contents, including natural language itself, conform to the truth-rules of the mental language. As in the Vienna Circle, semantics and epistemology are conjoined in these ideas: to have meaning is to have knowledge.

Some of these ideas are easily defeasible. Nobody uses meta-languages to reason or make deductions. Do they at least give us some inkling as to how we think? Strawson is funny and devastating about such a notion. The most powerful meta-language is a puny weakling next to the power of intuitive logic. Meta-languages can discover and deal with false propositions. In fact, this is implicit in their essence, and this also implies that false propositions have meaning and that it is not possible for truth to be defined in terms of meaning. The point is that whatever method that can be used to clarify linguistic meaning can be applied equally to true or to false propositions
Precision of expression can make meaning explicit, but it does not necessarily lead to truth, e.g., all unicorns are white. So the question can be asked: what is the use of meta-languages? If it were to obtain truth, well and good, but in this quest nothing can substitute for intuitive logic. And if it is to clarify meaning, then meta-languages are not in essence different from the normal, commonplace processes of mind, for mind is meaning and it is constantly probing into the meaning of its contents.

(E) As happened with philosophy of mind that, beyond the mere denial of psychology, went on to create its agenda, philosophy of language has also created its own agenda of themes. Among these themes are the following questions: is the unit of meaning the word or the proposition?; is meaning holistic or atomistic?; is it contextual or recursive and explicit? Some philosophers, e.g., Austin and Searle, took a cue from early analytical philosophy and developed the equivalence between phil-mind and phil-language. One of their fundamental gambits was to posit that the use of a language consists in speech acts, one of which, illocutionary propositions, are self-referential in going beyond their literal meaning. Austin is not widely followed. Searle's reputation is mainly as gadfly.

Philosophy of mind

The study of mind is ancient. The name psychology was coined in the 17th century. For a long time there was hardly a distinction to be made between psychology and philosophical psychology. When psychology finally became "formalized" during the 19th century it was difficult to disentangle the philosophers from the psychologists in the past. But philosophy and psychology took relatively divergent paths. Since philosophy nevertheless retained an interest in mind, it has become known as philosophy of mind, which does not exclude the philosophical exclusion of mind as a subject of study. In fact, ironical though it sounds, the first analytical philosophy of mind, which arose at the end of the process of psychological "emancipation", consisted basically in the utter denial that mind could be a serious subject of philosophical speculation.

Philosophy of mind is a recent coinage. It stems from the analytical denial of mind. Perhaps we should say the analytical opposition to the scientific pretensions of psychology, because, e.g., German idealism was not about mind, nor Kierkegaard's "existential" theology. Kant did consider logic to be innate. To the extent at least that logic can be rightfully considered to be innate, philosophy of mind fills a vacuum. But it tries to be "analytical" about mind in the sense of "transposing" rigorous analytical attitudes to the study of mind. In other words, even though it is a form of "idealism" it is not "psychologistic".

Philosophy of mind is a what a philosopher does when he thinks about mind, e.g., Descartes. Analytical philosophy of mind is, bottom-line, the denial of psychology. And finally philosophy of mind is a cross between epistemology and experimental and other branches of psychology. The analytical denial of psychology is based on the argument that we can only grasp mind from the propositions themselves of language. But this is tantamount to saying that phil-mind is thought about language that is not in the specific area of linguistics.

The following is a critical conspectus of analytical philosophy of mind. Idealism is the belief that representation is the main subject of philosophy as opposed to being itself assuming that a distinction can be made between being and its representation, or alternatively that representation is a reality different from what it represents. In Descartes and others, idealism implies innatism or nativism. Nativism is the belief in a priori cog-processes. British empiricists subscribe to idealism without nativism or innatism. Kant's philosophy was a form of nativist idealism. Beyond Kant, idealism tended to monopolize mainstream philosophical thought with the implication that logic was psychological.

It is against this that Frege's philosophy proposes anti-psychologism. Frege was primarily concerned with knowledge. Whatever his claims against metaphysics, he assumed the metaphysical position that being had precedence over its representation. To the extent that mind cannot avoid error and that this is a primary philosophical theme, then Frege was addressing important issues indeed. He was saying: let us forget mind, which is opaque. But did he solve the problem of error? Prima facie, in thus rejecting mind his situation was fraught, for if not mind and knowledge, what and knowledge? Frege leads to Russel and both Russell and Witt lead to Ryle. The whole program is anti-psychologistic at its most basic level.

What Frege put in place of psychology, was basically Begriffschift, i.e., logic and a quantificational system of notation. To this logical approach, Russell added logical atomism. The Vienna circle armed itself against error with verificationism and an extremist concept of meaning, i.e., what is unprovable is meaningless. And Wittgenstein who, though always arguing that formal logic is vacuous, at times embraced logical atomisms and verificationism, eventually settled on the idea that the only way to avoid error lies in the analysis of language and of what we can legitimately express in language. Quine refuted the conventionalist doctrine of logical positivism and, as against Wittgenstein, played all his marbles on formal logic.

Hacker argues that the thought of Wittgenstein is the paradigm of analytical philosophy, but it is more realistic to take a longer view in which the hallmark of analytical philosophy is the problem of error and that within this perspective there are two successive trends: the first against mind and the second back to mind with cognitivist and functionalist templates. In sum, having exhausted a "mechanical" formal-logic approach to error, analytical philosophy is back to epistemology and theory of mind with the implication of cognitive processes. Quine's naturalized epistemology would seem to be in this trend but for his blind spot to everything except formal logic.

Analyticity did not achieve its goal of banishing error from the world because it is impossible to do so. It is history that separates the wheat from the chaff but in doing so it does not jettison error. From a historical perspective, we can see that knowledge includes error. This historical diminution of error is what I call vox historiæ.

Frege got the analytical approach to mind going with his claim that logic had nothing to do with psychology. It involved, as Dummett saw it, the "extrusion of thought", which is of course mythic.

Husserl started from approximately the same premise but he did not renounce the concept of consciousness and argued in effect that the only way to grasp the issues relating to mind was to let only trained philosophers deal with them, specifically those "trained" in his own method, which he pompously called "phenomenology". Phenomenology is a glorified way of saying "introspection". Dennett resuscitated this approach as "heterophenomenology". Contemporary British philosophy of mind (eg Peacocke) is more or less based on the Husserlian premise.

Contemporary with analytical philosophy of mind--or rather its original purported non-existence, which was what Frege really argued for--were two interesting movements. There was Freudianism, which assumed that there are psychological laws and pretended to be capable of tuning in to and interpreting the slightest affective tremors in the human psyche.

The other movement was begun by the American psychological radical J.B.Watson and was called behaviorism. It consists in the belief that we can only know mind from the way we behave. This in effect means that we cannot even say that such a thing as mind exists. Behaviorism was very eccentric and never really had much currency in philosophy, although some philosophers did try to tone it down to some workable version. This is called logical behaviorism.

Russell gave some leeway to the direct knowledge of mind with the concepts of knowledge by acquaintance and of propositional attitudes. The proper contents of mind are propositional attitudes. They are opaque because they create substitutivity problems which produce all sort of nonsense, such as that George V knew Sir Walter Scott but not the author of Waverly . Predicate logic was an attempt to rectify linguistic ambiguities and paradoxes.

Before Wittgenstein, a division was conceived between the inner and the outer in mind. Wittgenstein denied this inner/outer division. This denial entailed that perception is not introspective, that introspection is not knowledge and does not reveal a valid inner side, that behaviour is not exclusively physical, that reasons and motives are not causes, and that words do not point to real mental entities. In sum, Wittgenstein denial of the inner/outer division was simply a denial of psychology.

In point of sheer size, all philosophical egos must bow to Wittgenstein's. Russell was healthily sceptical all his life. Frege was downright humble. He was Russell's whipping boy, just as Russell was Wittgenstein's until the final part of their relationship, when Russell thought he saw through Wittgenstein.

Wittgenstein, who at first was much admired by Russell but did not seem to reciprocate that sentiment, started by accepting that the world and mind were logical. For Wittgenstein language is logical. Even passion could be logical. Language was the bridge between them. This was approximately logical atomism.

Wittgenstein did not believe that thought could be independent of language. He thought that logic was tautological and eventually realized that predicate logic raised more problems than it solved. The failure of logic to discipline representation led him to decide that he had previously gone too far in recognizing anything relative to mind beyond language itself. He abandoned all reference to mind or to logic independent of language and he fell back entirely on language as the concretion of mind. In other words, it was through linguistic analysis that we can know whatever there is to know about mind, except what is said and written directly about mind as such. This was a curiously indirect and inconsistent approach. Wittgenstein's final position was that philosophy could be reduced to determining what can and cannot be said about so-called philosophical issues. As was to be expected, Russell, who had had much more general success, scorned this sort of thing.

Although in the Tractatus Wittgenstein did admit that there can be a representation of reality which however was inseparable from language, his most consistent position on mind throughout his life was that it did not really matter because it was inaccessible as such. His main argument was that the direct knowledge of mind as expressed in Descartes implies a private language. If it could be shown that the concept of a private language was unsustainable, then talk of mind and introspection were groundless.

By private language Wittgenstein meant a language used by only one person. Such a language would not have communicable rules. If a language does not have a grammar, it is unintelligible. Such a language cannot exist and if it does not exist, then the private-language knowledge of mind is impossible. The private-language argument is based on a rule-following argument which goes as follows: "There is no such thing as following a rule which no one else in principle follows, for there would then be no criterion to distinguish between following the rule and merely thinking that one was following it." Basically, a rule like a grammar must be shared. Since private language implies non-sharing, it has no rules, and if it has no rules, it is unintelligible.

Another argument against a private language is that in an "ordinary" language ostensive definition is possible if overrated, but a private language of the mind cannot point to mental events: without ostensivity no language; therefore, private language is not a language and there is no Cartesian introspection.

Furthermore, solipsism entails a private language. If solipsism is impossible or incoherent, then there is no private language. According to Wittgenstein, solipsism implies the strict separation between the self and the physical world, but the reference of self must be to its own body and thus the separation breaks down.

Still, Wittgenstein had to deal with representation, pain, and other "mental events". Representation was something he assumed with the belief that logic imbues the world. If logic imbues the world, then our grasp of the world is logical. Whatever goes logically for the world also goes logically for its representation. When the logical character of representation lost ground he merely dropped representation. How did this happen?

One way had to do with the representation of the negation of a fact. Representation is valid even when it is not true in the correspondence sense because it is about the way things are not, which is part of their specification. Wittgenstein was thus trying to escape the psychological constraints of the error-proneness of representation. However, this line of thought will not really work because it does not even address the problem of underlying, unsolvable incompatibilities. And there is something even more fraught. When Wittgenstein says that a representation can represent the way things are not he is falling headlong into the endless hole of regress, because it implies a representation of a representation. Thus, A implies (-A); A = (A/-A); (A/-A) implies -(A/-A); this implies -[-(A/-A)]; and so on.

Eventually, Wittgenstein entirely substituted language for representation, but the representation of error popped up in language too. To solve it Wittgenstein distinguished between what is grammatical and what is nonsensical. Propositions could be empirically true or false, but propositions about grammar were either grammatical or nonsensical. Philosophy's task was to exclude nonsense from thought.

Basically, Wittgenstein did not believe that it was possible to prove anything about mind from a pretended direct knowledge of mind. Since he had already given language a central role in philosophy, he used this "linguistic turn" to explain the extent to which we can understand and use mental concepts. Note that he never actually denied the existence of mental concepts. That he tried to reformulate them in such a radical way meant that he was in effect saying that their "conventional" formulation was erroneous. All of language therefore was implicitly erroneous. Ironically, what he claimed he was doing was putting these concepts in linguistic context. It was like an explication de texte of a text whose validity he himself doubted.

Pain was a problem. Who can deny pain? His gambit was to say that we cannot validly say "I know I am in pain". If this were valid, then it was possible to have direct knowledge of mind and Wittgenstein's efforts would be useless. His claim was that the avowal of pain is itself pain. It does not reveal a "knowing", the way we can know, say, a pin. To say that one is in pain is the social equivalent of the child's bawling. The word "pain" is the pain after the human being goes through the process of socialization.

As to all the other mental words, Wittgenstein proposed that they be analyzed one by one without theoretic preconceptions so as to determine how we can and how we cannot use them. It was an enquiry to determine the length to which we could go with such concepts. To have admitted a theory would have meant giving in to a view of mind and above all else he wanted the emphasis on language rather than on mind.

Wittgenstein was an austere man. His passionate desire to limit philosophy to what can be said about specific words rather than what we can build with words to interpret what the words mean, appears at first hand an admirable enterprise. Its simplicity, its concreteness, its piecemeal yet ambitious approach to reality, is part of its appealing austerity. But when you come down to it, whatever his sound mistrust and rebuttals of systems and pretentious and superfluous abstractions, what he is saying is that his way of looking at things, his analyses, his anti-systemics, are the way that things should be said and written and there is no difference between his claim and the claims of all thinkers of all times. Take the pain argument. He says that "pain" is pain itself. But in what is this definition superior to the concept that there is a distinction to be made between actual pain and the linguistic expression of pain? Albeit imperfectly, it is possible to recall physical pain and there are affects which are both physical and mental, e.g., anxiety, and still others which are purely mental or propositional.

Wittgenstein had a rather rudimentary sense of history. Ironically, he who was so punctilious and demanding about mind was almost promiscuous and devil-may-care about history. Despite being a Jew, he agreed with some of Hitler's libels about Jews and considered Spengler, the epitome of racist anti-positivism, an eminently readable historian.

An influential foray in this direction was Ryle's work on "mind". It yielded at least two results: the concept of category mistake--which is vague and "intuitively" understood or not at all--and the argument that "mind" is revealed as dispositions. Wittgenstein was more contemptuous than indignant at Ryle's interpretation of his own injunctions against psychology. Of Ryle's efforts Wittgenstein said that "the magic is gone", presumably because dispositions shift the emphasis from language to behaviour. Ryle was cut-and-drying a terribly complex issue. Ryle's theory may be flawed, but Wittgenstein's rejection was visceral. Strangely enough, the Wittgensteinian Ryle had words of praise for Freud.

Ryle's thought (1949), like Austin's (with whom we shan't bother), is directly descended from Wittgenstein's. According to Ryle there was an official dualistic doctrine of mind. There were two parallel series of events: spatial material events and mental events which occurred only in time. Introspection was reliable but sensations were not necessarily reliable. The existence of other minds was a problem. The principles of mind were a mystery, which Ryle called the "ghost in the machine". This "official" doctrine could of course be traced to Descartes, but it is also present in what we call the Roustan model. In sum, mind as such, and not as materialized in language, was action. Mind embraced and was superior to matter for whereas introspection was reliable sensation was not. Will determined the relation of mind to action. In lieu of dualistic psychology Ryle proposed dispositionalism. Mind is not different from the effects of mind. The only mental traits are dispositions to behaviour and the only way to know such dispositions is through behaviour itself. There are no mental traits leading to or producing behaviour, or at least we cannot know them. Thought itself is not a form of behaviour. There is no difference between will and action. Self-knowledge consists in the knowledge of other minds, for consciousness is, like Xenon's paradox, an infinitely regressive looking backwards. It does not exist. Consciousness was the awareness of awareness. If psychology is the science of human behaviour, then psychology includes such forms of human behaviour as are studied in economics, sociology, etc. But since economics and sociology involve propositional attitudes, which are intensional and the opposite of science, then psychology is not a science. In the end Ryle opts for the specification of psychology as the study of abnormal behaviour. The classification and diagnosis of our mental impotences require specialized research methods. This is why he considered Freud the greatest of all psychologists. Psychology is a partly fortuitous federation of inquiries and techniques. Ryle does not do away with dualism. He merely relegates one side of dualism. If he accepts that behaviour can reveal mind he is in dualism eo ipso. Since behaviour is the door to mind, assuming that nothing else but behaviour encompasses and explains mind, then it is mind explaining mind. And if this form of the knowledge of mind is reliable, why should any other approach to mind not be reliable? After all, what is more factual: "I feel happy" or "he looks or acts happy"?

The American philosopher W.V.O. Quine was closer to Wittgenstein than any one else in that he appeared to ignore mind entirely, not even deigning to accept it as something to be debated. Yet he was also the inventor of "naturalized epistemology", which is really a psychological version of theory of knowledge. His strenuous but unavailing efforts to discredit the reliability of language itself were not in the spirit of Wittgensteinian thought.

For Quine language can be derived entirely from the observation of behaviour. But language is tainted with ambiguity and lack of precision. Since it is all we have to reach mind, our knowledge of mind has to be flawed. But observation itself is not beyond doubt. Mind produces a torrential outputs from meagre inputs. Theory is always underdetermined by evidence. Despite these weird ideas--from which it is possible to argue that even perception is unreliable--Quine defends the thesis that psychology should be substituted by epistemology. Now, how can you distrust mind yet propose an equivalence between psychology and epistemology?

Only Quine can be said to be as austere as Wittgenstein although austere only in respect of mind for Quine is as loose as the most unguarded author in some of his pronouncements. His view of life is as far from Wittgenstein's stringent even religious point of view as earth from heaven. The difference really is that whereas Wittgenstein was interested in the grounds of psychology, Quine had a pragmatic and pedagogical attitude that permitted him to saunter away from his rigorous logicism and talk of "naturalized epistemology" as if there were not the slightest inconsistency.

On knowledge in general Quine is holistic: all beliefs are interrelated. His holism is sceptical and this means that he is himself a kind of living paradox. He has no affinity whatever for history, which is understandable considering his logicism and the relative intemporality of logic. The key word here is "relative" for it is possible to make a case for the historicity of logic, even if fundamental intuitive-logic operations are mental and everlasting.

PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY IN A CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT

Offhand we can think of two approaches to the distinction between psychology and philosophy of mind: a quickie, the-way-things-are approach, and an in-depth historical approach. In the first approach philosophy of mind can be defined in terms of its interaction with psychology. Phil-mind pretends to be the critical overseer of psychology. But it is also the beneficiary of work in experimental psychology. They have a common terrain on the issue of methodologies. However, aside from its connection to psychology, phil-mind has developed an array of more or less conventional themes, e.g., is FP a theory?, which are not in the agenda of psychology. Nevertheless, these reflections suggest that what we have here are different, perhaps complementary, approaches to mind. Philosophy can provide clues for research and cognitive psychology certainly has contributed many ideas to philosophy. To put it briefly--though possibly too briefly--whereas philosophical psychology retains the traditional methods of philosophical enquiry with which it approaches the broader, more ~controversial, themes of mind, psychology proper is mostly experimental and specifically issue-oriented, i.e., in the sense of a distinction between themes and specific issues. A quickie distinction between themes and issues is that themes involves principles whereas issues involve the application of principles.

By the 50s, it was becoming increasingly evident that the original analytical approach to mind was unsatisfactory. How can you deny that what you are doing when you deny exists? According to a conventionally self-serving version, H.Putnam proposed that the way computers function could be the key to understanding how mind works. This became known as functionalism, which holds that causation and interactiveness are the basic features of thought. Later on, recently in point of fact, Putnam went back on his functionalist ways saying that mind was too complex to be formalized. He based this recantation on Gödel's proof of the inconsistency of arithmetic and, by extension, of all formal deductive systems.

According to another version, Jerry Fodor's, it was so-called token identity theory which paved the way for functionalism. This theory implies that thought need not be identical to brain matter and that it can be embodied in other substances, such as those from which computers are built. Type functionalism would imply a complete identity between thought and its material base. But there is no replica of brain. Token identity supposes parts of mind and computers can indeed replicate some mental functions. Fodor chooses this roundabout way because, in his view, it was necessary to maintain the requisite scientific discipline about mind on which behaviorism--which he nevertheless found inadequate in itself--had a stranglehold.

Fodor additionally argued that the analytical path back to mind also lay in the study of cognition and specifically in the modular and nativist arguments of N.Chomsky on language-learning. Fodor made some further deductions from Chomsky: one, that there is an innate mental language, that in fact knowledge is inherited; and two, that cognitive processes are modular and even encapsulated. Encapsulation does not seem to square with interactive functionalism. It seems to have been an improvisation against Quinian holistic scepticism. Fodor also works his way to functionalism from Russell's propositional attitudes. Whether Russell would have agreed with any of this is debatable. What the two have in common is their basic attitude to mind as something real, not just empty talk.

Russell and Fodor are acutely aware of the history of their discipline. Russell has a long-view approach. He knows the history of philosophy backwards and forwards. Fodor's view is at once deeper and more circumscribed, because it is centered on analytical thought on mind. It is not that Russell does not recognize such a tendency. He has ties to Frege and to Wittgenstein. But it is precisely these ties prevent him from taking in the entire movement of philosophy of mind. In fact, Russell is not particularly keen on philosophy of mind--although he is not blind to it--where as Fodor is almost obssessively centered precisely on that subject. In other words, what we have here are complementary perspectives on the history of the subject.

There is a British philosophy of mind. It too stems from Wiitgenstein and Ryle, but it has its own landmark works. It exhibits a decidedly Husserlian bent. Dummett is well within British philosophy of mind, which he calls philosophy of thought. According to Dummett, philosophy of thought is more a doctrine and less a branch of philosophy properly speaking. Philosophy of thought is the belief that the access to thought is through language. In this sense, then, philosophy of thought is a position within philosophy of mind. Philosophy of thought is akin to what Wittgenstein understood as philosophy of mind. Philosophy of mind takes in not just Wittgenstein's philosophy of mind and Dummett's philosophy of thought but also identity theory, cognitivism, functionalism, neurophilosophy, anomalous monism, and other schools and disciplines. According to Dummett, even though it was Wittgenstein who actually took the linguistic turn, i.e., eliminativism about thought, it was Frege who first proposed philosophy of thought--in 1879 with his distinction between mathematical logic and thought--but without the elimination of thought itself.

As sure as night follows day, artificial intelligence (AI) arises from functionalist foundations. It is the conviction that machines are potentially capable of doing everything that the human mind does. Therefore, we can discard mind entirely and concentrate on AI, which will eventually answer all questions about psychological issues.

Daniel Dennett is its ablest philosophical champion. He gives the impression of not giving an inch in his struggle against Cartesianism, an attitude originally inspired, as he himself recognizes, by Ryle. Yet he is forced to admit a form of productive introspection, which he calls heterophenomenology, and since he also believes that pure physicalism is nonsense, he speaks of psychological "loans" which analytical philosophy of mind will repay with interest. Dennett recognizes that it is possible to know motives. Behaviour is rational. His concept of mind is simplistic. His anti-cartesianism leads to stressing subconscious processes. But his bottom-line belief is artificial intelligence.

Both Fodor and Dennett combine functionalism with cognitivism. Peacocke's main concern appear to be concepts, but he is in the thick of certain specific phil-mind themes, such as whether FP is or is not a theory. Peacocke and the Brits in general do not seem to be too keen on cognitivism. They claim that philosophers introspect better and with more rigour than the man on the Clapham bus.

Cognitivism entered phil-mind through the work of Piaget, Fodor, and others, i.e., philosophers expanded on the work of the original cognitivists. Cognitivism is a branch of psychology and as such it constitutes a denial of early analytical philosophy. In sum, even though Fodor, Dennett, and Peacocke have analytical pretensions, so to speak, they represent a turning back on or tergiversation from the rigours and the futility of analytical antipsychologism.

The latest prop of AI is connectionism, on which all analytical philosophers have something to say. It is a non-centralized, "non-linguistic" computational process that permits pattern-recognition, assumed to be a complex and unreplicable human faculty. More encouraging may be that CPU-based chess programs compete with and even defeat grand masters.

Dennett takes his view of history from Ryle. But he is also concerned with the development of the trend towards AI, and in this sense he also has a historical perspective of his own. Ryle like Russell took a long historical view. However, he was obsessed with Cartesianism. For him everything is before and after Descartes. It is a simplistic interpretation though not necessarily inaccurate. The connectionists have no interest at all in history. Their perspective is myopic. They think they have truth by the scruff of the neck. This is close to Wittgenstein and Quine. But at least the latter are aware of being part of a long history and connectionists are only aware of being the apex of a short history.

Physicalism is ultimately the belief that psychological statements are not reliable. This is best expressed in the awareness paradox: to know something about mental states is not necessarily to know anything at all. Consequently, physicalism is the search for alternative explanations of mind. Of course, if we can say mind we already admit a psychological statement. Physicalists in face of this contradiction usually dispatch the criticism with talk of loans which are to be repaid in full and with interest.

This is the line adopted by the Paul Churchland in such works as Matter and Consciousness (1984), whose groundwork proposition is that science can take care of philosophical problems, especially those of philosophy of mind. Churchland's physicalism is, in his view, compatible with cognitivism and functionalism, i.e., theories of mind that steer clear of positing the concept of awareness, although he would certainly have no truck with the notion that thought can best be studied in computational machines. His physicalist commitment is to neurology and what it can tell us about mind. Whatever claims he may make, his philosophy is best described as psychoneurological. However, his wife Patricia, who shares his beliefs, speaks of Neurophilosophy (1986). In this book, according to Churchland, cognitivism and work on AI adopt a top-down strategy whereas his own is a bottom-up strategy, but he conceives their relation as one of interanimation. She strays too far from commonsense when she argues that neuroscience gives a "fine-grained" picture of mind. At most neuroscience can discover brain areas where reactions and functions of a general type can be located.

Simon Blackburn on Anthony Appiah, For Truth in Semantics (Oxford: Blackwell), in TLS, February 27 1989, p. 221-2

"In the recent work of philosophers like Fodor (1976) and Field (1977, 1978), by contrast, problems of meaning, in particular, have been superseded by problems of representation, in general (see also the papers in Block 1980). This has involved bringing philosophical problems about the mind rather than about language to the focus of attention; and it has involved treating the mind as a functioning causal system continuous with the rest of nature, in precisely the way I suggested just now would be congenial to realism." (Appiah)

A battle or a free-for-all?

In sum, what have we here? We have a period in analytical philosophy, roughly from the 1870's to the 1950's, when its stance consisted in denying mind, and we have a second period, from the late 1950s onward, when it virtually coined the expression philosophy of mind. How can such antithetical attitudes both be analytical?

Analyticity is ultimately the belief that philosophy can be as rigorous as science, even when it propounds the abolition of philosophy itself, which was Wittgenstein's last and more or less hopeless enterprise. (It is in this loyalty to a hopeless cause that makes Wittgenstein appealing, even quaintly existentialist.) If this rigour led analytical philosophy to deny psychology, the stringencies of cyber-think later allowed those philosophers who could rightly think of themselves as analytical to let mind back into their thought.

What are the lines of battle involved here? It is more like a free-for-all than a battle, which is "normal" in philosophy. Russell more or less "destroyed" Frege, who meekly admitted he had failed. Then Wittgenstein came along and slapped Russell about, who took it like a man. Wittgenstein was the bully who could not only crush his opponents but also ignore or disdain allies and potential allies. Wittgenstein in the end was a lonely, even a pathetic, figure. Russell, in his zenith, could afford to disdain him. Fodor, who--like all analytical philosophers of mind--is indebted to Russell, relegates Wittgenstein to footnotes. Dennett makes a big to-do about Ryle. He misreads Wittgenstein. AI theorists are virtually in the suburbs of philosophy, possibly willing, like Wittgenstein, to let it go.

It seems then we do have a battle line, which is defined by, on one side, the denial of philosophy of mind, and on the other, by its gingerly, conditioned acceptance. On the side of the deniers the generalissimo is Wittgenstein. On the other side no one can be said to lead the host. However, on inspection this separation starts cracking. Russell has a foot in both camps. Wittgenstein himself, as we said, disdained alliances. It is usually said that Quine is a "towering figure", hardly therefore a man in a foxhole. Fodor could claim the marshallship in philosophy of mind, but Dennett could rightly say that Fodor is lacking in experimental expertise, on which Dennett is an "expert". And there are the British philosophers of mind, who make a great show of rigour but, possibly for lack of gumption, have not made much of an impression anywhere except among themselves. Just to round out rather than finalize things, AI is a hubristic fief unto itself, not unlike Wittgenstein, who was almost agonizingly existential in his final avatar. Therefore, we have indeed not a battle but a catch-as-catch-can situation, with occasional opportunistic or conjunctural regroupings.

The chronology of phil-mind can be represent as a parallel and imbricating series of continuities of thought. Phil-mind starts with Descartes and carries on to the present. Psychology as such is at least in part a post-Cartesian derivation from phil-mind which in time has grown and diversified. Early analytical phil-mind starts with a philosophical reaction against psychologism, which is a philosophical attitude based on psychological methodologies and themes, although in fact psychology is a branching out from phil-mind, so that basically what we have in early analytical phil-mind is a reaction against Cartesian dualism. However, early analytical phil-mind was probably played out shortly after the war, because from the start it was really a blind alley as far as the study of mind was concerned. What put paid to early analytical phil-mind were cognitivism and functionalism. Cognitivism started in psychology and functionalism came shortly afterwards from the field of computation. These tendencies were twinned in philosophers that realized that anti-psychologism led nowhere and found that cognitivism and functionalism offered approaches to mind which though less rigorous than early analytical phil-mind were rigorous enough to pass muster under the closest philosophical scrutiny.

Physicalism

Aristotle was a physicalist through and through: the soul is material, things have souls (hylozoism), etc. The atomists from Democritus to Lucretius were materialists. Descartes' speculation on the pineal gland as the organ where mind and matter meet is pure physicalism, in fact close to neurophilosophy, except for the cogito part of his philosophy. However, Descartes is the founding father of modern dualism, which lies at the opposite end of monistic physicalism or materialism.

Dualism dominated the thought of the British empiricists and of Leibniz. Spinoza's pantheism was a quasi-theological attempt to bridge the gap, although it must be remembered that faced with unbridgeable dualism some post-Cartesian philosophers did find the appeal to God congenial or inevitable. But dualism did not have the field to itself and materialism was the dominant metaphysical position during the 18th century Enlightenment. Kant himself apparently was not bothered by the mind/matter problem, and after him German philosophy and its external satellites and followers went squarely for the idealist or non-physicalist side of dualism. But it was in Germany also that the reaction against extreme idealism took place with the anti-psychologism of Frege.

Psychologism is the belief that logic is a mental property. Frege tried to separate thought processes from the thinking subject. To some extent this is a physicalist attitude, i.e., to the extent that it erases the psychological or mental or introspective side of the dualist outline. But mostly it is a form of ignoring the problem and it became the accepted approach among analytical philosophers, including Russell and Wittgenstein. Russell pointed out that thought was opaque and intensional. Wittgenstein tried to reduce thought to language, which is a form of behaviorism.

Behaviorism itself, founded by J.B.Watson and expanded by Wittgenstein and Quine, and by Ryle also in some measure, is a form of physicalism if we accept that language is a physical phenomenon, but none of this touches or gets close to the fundamental problem that is involved in Descartes thought, i.e., how do we square the act of thinking with the matter of brain, the known physical seat of thought, when we know that matter as such is incapable of thought

Some members of the Vienna Circle did try their hands at solving the problem, as can be read in, among myriad works, Ausonio Marras, Intentionality, Mind, and Language (1972). C.G. Hempel argued that psychological statements to be valid must translate into physical statements devoid of psychological content. Physics has to confirm psychological claims. Carnap apparently held the same fundamental belief, but he accepted that psychological statements based on regularities could describe dispositions. However, such claims were not psychological. These attempts to reduce thought to physical phenomena were mostly a matter of language use. There were no real attempts to find an explanation for the problem of dualism beyond the contextual use of language. In fact most analytical philosophers were simply materialists uninterested in psychology, and to deal with the problem of dualism one must at least have a grasp of what dualism means, which requires admitting that there are mental contents and that part of awareness is the ability to know them.

In the analytical tradition, Ryle wrestled with the dualism problem but did not come up with a strictly materialist or physicalist solution, unless again we count a language-based theory as physicalism. What Ryle did do was downgrade the mental side of dualism. He applied the concept of categorial distinctions. Propositional attitudes or psychological statements "signify dispositions, and to say that something has a disposition for Ryle is not to report the occurrence of an episode, physical or nonphysical, but to make a law-like statement whose form is, despite appearances, like that of a hypothetical, not a categorical, statement, and whose function is not to describe but to explain and `licence inferences'. Thus Ryle believes that psychological statements and statements describing physical occurrences are logically distinct because they belong to different logical categories...Therefore on Ryle's account, the traditional psychophysical problem cannot even be properly formulated; the metaphysical theses of psychophysical dualism and of monism are, Ryle claims, pseudo-problems" (Ausonio Marras).

Another philosopher that dealt with dualism in its own terms and not by ignoring one or the other side of the issue was Chisholm. Sellars opposed Chisholm. "...Chisholm's thesis of linguistic dualism entails the denial of the physicalist thesis defended by C. G. Hempel...that `all psychological statements which are meaningful...are translatable into propositions which do not involve psychological concepts, but only the concepts of physics'...Thus for Chisholm it is only because of the intentional properties of mental episodes that meaningful verbal episodes can be said to have the semantical properties they have...Thus for Sellars mental episodes are postulated as theoretical entities, on the model of overt verbal episodes. This should clarify Sellars' claim that the intentionality of thought is to be explained by reference to the categories of semantical discourse about language, and not the other way around, as Chisholm would want. Sellars can make his claim, of course, because the model used in constructing the notion of thought is semantical discourse itself" (A. Marras).

Other English philosophers who give some leeway to mind in dualism are G.Evans and C.Peacocke.

The following notes are from C.V. Borst (1970). Identity theory or central state materialism is a deliberate effort to deal with dualism in physicalist terms. Identity theory claims that for every mental event there is a corresponding brain event such that both events are identical. This thesis is held by U.T. Place and J.C. Smart (1959). It entails that the causal role in behaviour is physical. In the same camp but less rigorous is Armstrong, who admits that the person is formed by mental states with an influence on behavior. Borst himself argues that radical identity theory is incoherent since if brain displaces mind entirely, then the relation of identity itself is meaningless: identity of the brain to what?

Nagel is on the physicalist side: the mental and the physical are identical phenomena expressed in different vocabularies. In the 1965 article "Physicalism" Thomas Nagel argues for a metaphorical explanation of physicalism. How can the physical and the mental, so disparate, be identical? He argues that other things besides mind and brain can be disparate yet identical, and he cites water and H2O, i.e., water and the molecules of which it is composed. The final objection to identity is that mind has a self which cannot be found in things. However, Nagel rejoins that this proposition entails that self is a substance and that if we make a total objective description of the universe we shall never come up to an entity called ~Thomas Nagel, although of course we shall find many propositions which belong to Thomas Nagel. There is no such a thing as a substance called self. But is this metaphorical approach a solution or an explanation or anything at all? All that Nagel achieved was a comparison between the pair mind/matter and the pair water/molecules. It is an analogy. The water/molecules pair is a metaphor for the mind/matter identity relation But why should the relation between water and molecules be like the relation between mind and matter? The identity relation is only assumed for mind and matter. In sum, the metaphorical approach if it is to work at all must be completed with a specification of mind and of matter, such as in attributing to mind units or constituents which are the counterparts of neurons.

The heart of the matter on the question of dualism is that physicalism or materialism is not necessarily incompatible with theories that posit or accept the possibility of mental processes. Fodor criticizes Wittgenstein for confusing mentalism with dualism. He typically argues that central state materialism entails the mental as opposed to straight behaviorism of the Watson/Skinner sort. In fact, he sees it as a directly derived alternative to the flaws of behaviorism. Jeffrey Poland, in Physicalism: The philosophical foundations (1994) reiterates the compatibilism thesis and mentions representationalism, functionalism, and mentalism as doctrines which can stand in a conjunctive relation with physicalism.

Mind and brain are corresponding realities Are they identical? Awareness establishes a chasm between them. They are identical only in the figurative, analogous, or formal sense of a one-on-one correspondence. They are not identical in a literal sense. Analogous monism admits both the mental and the physical. The mental supervenes upon the physical. There can be nothing mental without the brain. However, the brain is not the best way to get to know mind. It is necessary to go to mind and then elaborate a theory of the mental which can manage to bridge to the physical in such a manner as to be epistemically productive for both sides: for the awareness of mind and for the physical knowledge of the brain and its relation to mind. To do this I posit an analogy between squiggles and neurons, which is not merely verbal expression but can actually help orient neurological research and put a brake on excessive speculation about mind from its direct knowledge. Nagel's analogies do not go beyond an effort to conceptualize. My goal is to clarify and defend physicalism in a way that would prepare the ground for a thorough defense of mental representation and representation theory. Functionalism does not do this adequately enough.

Plantinga

Clayton

"A recent school of thought in the philosophy of religion, owing much to the influence of Alvin Plantinga, argues that any system of beliefs contains basic beliefs that are generally unquestioned, e.g. the belief that there are other minds, that there is a window in this room, that I had breakfast this morning. It argues that belief in God, likewise, is `properly basic'. These thinkers represent an interesting middle position in the discussion. On the one hand, they claim to be working on the level of a general (universal) theory of rationality. On the other, their notion of proper basicality, like appeals to a self-authenticating revelation, grants a certain epistemic weight to unargued religious beliefs. Instead of taking these beliefs to be epistemically neutral, they wish to place the burden of proof on the nonbeliever to challenge any beliefs that are basic for the believer...However, even if I am personally disposed to continue to hold a belief when I am aware of no `defeaters' for it, it is not clear to me that this should give that belief any epistemic weight". This approach, in brief, amounts to "foundationalism based on the absence of defeaters rather than on positive epistemic grounds". (pp.15-6)

Plantinga does not admit the necessity for arguments about the existence of God. Therefore, he would not bother to refute atheists. Therefore, also, he is led to logical exercises of the "angels-on-the head-of-a-pin" type. Clayton does assume that it is possible to discuss what he calls the "prolegomena of theology", and in this we agree, with the proviso that faith itself goes a huge step beyond rational debate.

Alvin Plantinga, "On Ockham's way out", in Thomas V. Morris, ed., The Concept of God, Oxford, 1987

Assuming that logic reveals necessary truth and that language is a precise instrument of logic, then it can be proven that the logical statement: "God is omniscient, therefore human conduct is predetermined and unfree" is false. Also, the Boethian thesis that to God everything is present, that for Him there is no past or future, "presupposes the falsehood of a widely accepted thesis about God and time" and further: "I am inclined to believe that this thesis--the thesis that God is both atemporal and such that everything is present for him--is incoherent." (p.176)

One further assumption: God is logical/rational/coherent, and he cannot be anything but that. The demonstration has an intuitive and a logical aspect. Plantinga intuits that there is an asymmetry between past and future in the sense that future events are in our power in a way in which past events are not. This is to start by assuming what he wants to prove, but let's let it pass. The intuition of asymmetry is validated by demonstrating that there are "hard facts" and "soft facts" about the past, and that "hard facts" are those about which absolutely nothing can be done to change them, whereas there are no hard facts about the future. The demonstration basically involves the concept of "accidental necessity" as underlying the assumption that only "hard facts" are true. Basically, therefore, the argument consists in defining the concept of "necessary per accidens". If this can be done, then "hard facts" are demonstrated. Since the intuition is right, free will is also demonstrated. However, the distinction between hard and soft facts is fishy. If I say "I am writing a book", this is supposedly a "soft" fact about the past: yet is it any less "hard" than the statement: "I have written a book" or "I wrote a book"? Another problem: since "hard facts" are those which do not entail anything about the future, then if I have various projects "in the works" but none of them is complete when death intervenes, those projects by definition are not "hard facts". Plantinga's arguments and examples remind me of the "angels-on-head-of-pin" theological tradition. For instance, he argues that the propositions "Abraham existed a long time ago" and "Abraham exists in 1995 BC", entail the proposition that "Abraham will not beging to exist in 1999". Of course, but they also entail that "if it rains tomorrow it is likely that it will not rain fishes" and so on. What Plantinga is saying, and saying over and over in highly pedantic logic, is that: (1) conduct is not determined because it isn't; (2) God's omniscience does not determine conduct because it doesn't. Through logic, he turns the tables on logic: whereas it is thought that without logic any proposition is possible, it turns out that it is through logic that you can prove virtually anything.

The strictly logical argument is the following:

DF = Det if DF = HF

HF = NPA

DF does not = NPA

therefore DF is not a hard fact and does not = Det,

where DF = deistic foreknowledge, HF = hard fact, and NPA = necessity per accidens.

QED

 However, is it also true that HF = NPA = a necessary condition for truth? For example: "Copernicus or someone in 1550 or some other time in the distant past knew that there will be an eclipse of the moon in 1991" is a very likely proposition, if not actually true in almost every respect except being a hard fact. If it is argued that it is "very likely, if not actually true" because it involves large natural forces and magnitudes, then it can be argued back that the proposition "In 1940 God knew that Milena will be living in Havana in 1991" is in the same category as the first one, and even closer to the truth, because it involves a force greater than all others: God's omniscience.

 Plantinga is right in some of his premises: God exists in time and he cannot contravene rationality. Therefore my problem is finding a coherent explanation for the compatibility of those premises and God's omniscience. My explanation for the moment consists in just one phrase: "voluntary inhibition". This means that God exists in time because he chooses to. Still I have to think this through.

Plato and Aristotle

PRE-ARISTOTLE

El origen de la filosofía griega en la Antigüedad Clásica es la palabra ser, tanto el sustantivo como el verbo

En cuanto sustantivo, ser es único pera las cosas son

En cuanto verbo, ser es estar, pero las cosas se mueven

Frente a una de estas contradicciones, Parménides negó el movimiento

¿Cómo puede ser esto?

Esto es posible mediante el conocimiento y el uso de la lógica

Para Parménides el pensamiento lógico era más real, más confiable, que la percepción de las cosas

Todavia es la fecha que en filosofía se parte de ese supuesto para predicar cosas de la realidad, del mundo, de la historia, etc.

En inglés se habla de modal logic y de contrafactuality

Por ejemplo: en lógica A permite deducir B

En la realidad del mundo A puede lo mismo conducir a B que a C que a D

De aquí se deduce que la historia, puesto que no se ajusta a la lógica, no tiene sentido en la medida en la que no da pie a una lectura única

Con la experiencia acumulada por la humanidad de su propia ilogicidad, lo cual no obsta para que en ella se obesrven tendencias históricas, vale decir, significaciones concretas, tales ejercicios son una curiosidad intelectual, pero para los griegos la lógica rigurosa tenía algo de maravillosamente seductor: era como descubrir un nuevo mundo y querer darle sustancia poblándolo de proposiciones y términos y predicados y todo los demás hechos del pensamiento

Gregory Vlastos, The Philosophy of Socrates (1971/1980)

Vlastos, "Introduction: The Paradox of Socrates"

"This, of course, is his famous doctrine, that `virtue' is knowledge', which means two things: first, that there can be no virtue without knowledge...No less extreme is the mate to this doctrine, that if you do have this kind of knowledge, you cannot fail to be good and to act as a good man should, in the face of any emotional stress or strain"

"So here is one side of Socrates. He has an evangel to proclaim, a great truth to teach: our soul is the only thing in us worth saving, and there is only one way to save it: to acquire knowledge"

Paradox 1

But does he have that knowledge?

"If he is wiser than others, Socrates...declares [in the Apology], it is only because he does not think he has the knowledge which others think they have but haven't"

Yet again: "He goes to his death confident that `no evil thing can happen to a good man'--that `good man' is himself. Can this be the same man who believes that no one can be good without knowledge, and that he has no knowledge?"

Paradox 2

"But there is more to the paradox...Socrates' characteristic activity is the elenchus, literally, `the refutation'. You say A, and he shows you that A implies B, and B implies C, and then he asks, `but didn't you say D before? And doesn't C contradict D?'...Instead of trying to pilot you around the rocks, he picks one under water a long way ahead where you would never suspect it and then makes sure you get all the wind you need to run full-sail into it and smash your keel upon it"

"Here then is our paradox. But it is no use looking for the answer until we have taken into account still another side to Socrates: the role of the searcher. `Don't think'. he says to the great sophist Protagoras, `that I have any other interest in arguing with you but that of clearing up my own problems as they arise'"

"Does this show a way out of our paradox? I think it does. It puts in a new light the role that seemed so hard to reconcile before. Socrates the preacher turns out to be a man who wants others to find out his gospel so far as possibe by themselves and of themselves. Socrates the teacher now appears as the man who has not just certain conclusions to impart to others, but a method of investigation--the method by which he reached these results in the first place, and which is even more important than the results, for it is the means of testing, revising, and going beyond them"

[Socrates only knows that he doesn't know anything

That is exactly how Descartes started

Descartes was at the other extreme of the Classical Greek attitude to the world: no Greek philosopher would have felt paralyzed by the problem of the reality of the world

Aristotle considered matter to be primary substance, which is something that Descartes rules out from the beginning

However, Socratic scepticism is not, formally, unlike Cartesian scepticism

What socrates then incarnated is the philosophical spirit

Nothing is sacrosanct, nothing is closed to enquiry, nothing is to be taken for granted, nothing is beyond examination and criticism]

"But was Socrates right?...I do not think the Socratic way is the only way to save a man's soul. What Socrates called `knowledge' he thought both necessary and sufficient for moral goodness"

Paradox 3

In fact, this is another side of the Socratic paradox: the knowledge that Socrates preaches does not necessarily lead to virtue, as we see in the Laches. Vlastos says: "the bravest men...would surely have flunked the Socratic examination on courage"

"Had he so much as felt the need of investigating knowledge itself as a fact of human nature, to determine just exactly what, as a matter of fact, happens to a man when he has or he hasn't knowledge, Socrates might have come to see that even his own dauntless courage in the face of death he owed not to knowledge but to something else, more akin to religious faith"

Socrates rejected Athenian class-morality

"Why rank [Socrates'] method among the great achievements of humanity? Because it makes moral inquiry a common human enterprise, open to every man"

A.R. Lacey, "Our knowledge of Socrates"

[The question arises: are these and the paradoxes that follow Socratic or Platonic?

The Platonic Socrates does not resolve the paradoxes he himself creates

He is himself a sophist in the sense of a person who used reason as a means rather than as an end in itself

This corresponds to the satire in Aristophanes

But in Plato he has another dimension: the principled, idealistic side of a man who faces death with serenity and resolve

However, in Xenophon Socrates is rather conventional in his social and ethical views, and there too he faced death with the qualities Plato with which Plato endowed him

Would a man be more likely to accept the fate the state imposed on him from his own metaphysical principles or from belief in the justness of his sentence?

It would seem to me that the Platonic Socrates is a creation of Plato, i.e., he is not in Plato as he was in real life, not entirely so anyway, but as Plato chose to portray him

Hence, Plato is also the creator of the paradoxes, and this can also be deduced from some of the paradoxes we shall see]

Richard Robinson, "The What-Is-X? Question"

"If we look in the early dialogues for justifications of this principle, for reasons why the question What is X? must always be answered prior to any other question about X, we do not find them"

Paradox 4

We know X

We cannot define X

If we cannot define X we do not know X

But in fact we do know X

Flew

"The mistake characteristic of the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues, of arguing that no one knows anything about Xs, or even that any Xs truly are Xs, unless he can provide a definition of the word `X'...This fallacy generates two paradoxes: first, many with every apparent claim to know what X is really cannot; second, no one could test any disputed definition of `X' against known instances of Xhood"

"Throughout the long series of his dialogues Plato continued to believe in the propriety and importance of this search for essences which he had depicted at the beginning of his writings"

"Socrates almost invariably assumes that his term X is univocal. He has no fear of ambiguity"

[But X is a product of human experience embodied or embedded or manifest or categorized in language, by language, through language

It is useless to try to be absolutely precise about such things

Quine with his denial of synonymy is at the other extreme of Socrates

Paradox 6

However, it could be that Socrates only seems to be univocal

In practice, in the reality of Plato's dialogues, he never ever manages to define things univocally

Yet again, we can doubt neither Socrates' carping nor Plato's idealism, and the greatest of all the paradoxes is the temporal compression that brings together in Plato's dialogues the greatest sceptic and the greatist dogmatist

Paradox 7

There is yet another possibility

It is likelier that Socrates was the doubter than that Plato was not the idealist

Since Socrates is in large part Plato's doing, then the paradox is Plato himself: idealist and dogmatist, yet aware of equivocation and doubt]

Gerasimos Santas, "Socrates at Work on Virtue and Knowledge in Plato's Laches"

"Some of Plato's early works, such as the Laches and the Charmides, have not traditionally received the attention accorded such Socratic dialogues as the Protagoras, the Meno, and the Gorgias. Yet, these subsequent dialogues discuss themes and problems first broached in these earlier works: the theme that virtue is knowledge of good and evil, and that this knowledge is akin to science; the problem of the unity of virtue; the Socratic insistence that practical, ethical problems be solved by appeal to knowledge, not to votes; the problem of how it is possible to know that oneself or others have such knowledge"

"If fighting in armor and similar pursuits are intended to develop courage, their worth cannot be estimated before it is known what courage is"

"The first consequence [from the arguments in the Laches] is the doctrine of the `unity of virtue': that if a man has any one virtue he has them all. To obtain this consequence from the present argument we only need to add...a proposition that Socrates often assumes...: that to have any one of the virtue a man must have knowledge of good and evil"

Paradox 7

"How paradoxical the doctrine of the unity of virtue is we can see by stating it another way: each man either has all the virtues or none of them!"

"If we grant the...Socratic premisses that imply the unity of virtue, it would seem that any attempt to define any one virtue as knowledge of good and evil will end up in failure in that we end up defining the whole of virtue, whereas we were trying to define some one virtue which is part and not the whole of virtue"

[This is the basis of Socratic scepticism

I can argue from here to my statement that, despite his belief in univocality, Socrates in practice never actually defnes terms univocally]

"The first consequence is that the virtues cannot be found apart, each from the others, in a man. The second consequence is that the virtues cannot be distinguished even in definition, each from the others"

"In the Republic...the story has a different ending...Though he retains the view that knowledge (or at least true belief) of good and evil is necessary for virtue, he gives up the view that it is sufficient; and he brings in new elements for the definition of the various virtues, the three elements of the soul, their functions and relations; and through the analogy of social virtues and virtues in the individual he even makes circumstances and behavior relevant again to the definition of the virtues"

Summary of Protagoras

This dialogue is divided into some six or seven parts

Part one is just a sort of introduction to what is to come: Socrates' version of a debate he had with Protagoras the sophist

In part two, Socrates questions Hippocrates as to the wisdom of putting his education in the hands of Protagoras

He asks, more or less: can he teach you virtue?

In the third part, Protagoras defends his art

Socrates asks him to show how virtue can be taught, to which the sophist answers with the Epimetheus/Prometheus creation myth in order to illustrate that all men believe that they posses the knowledge of virtue and how they acquire this belief through education

"It would be surprising if it could not be taught", he says

In the fourth part, Socrates takes the offensive, so to speak, and admitting Protagoras' peroration about the teachability of virtue, asks him if virtue is one or many

Are virtues, he proposes, like things made of gold in relation to gold, or like facial features in relation to the face?

He argues that either for all virtues there is only one contrary, which is vice, in which case virtue is one, or each virtue is different from all the others

Socrates argues for the first alternative, but Protagoras replies that one person can have both one virtue and the contrary of another virtue. e.g., brave and unfair

The fifth part starts with Protagoras losing his temper and arguing that Socrates, who wants brevity and not discourses, cannot unilaterally establish the rules in the debate

The spectators pressure the two debaters and Socrates agrees to have Protagoras ask the questions if he afterwards allows Socrates to apply his method, to which Protagoras assents

In the sixth part, then, Protagoras asks about the interpretation of a poem by Simonides and Socrates answers minutely at length, and at the end argues that poetry is alright in its place but that it has nothing to do with the previous debate

Under pressure, and through Socrates' cajolery, Protagoras accedes to letting Socrates continue with his enquiry into virtue

In the seventh part, then, Socrates comes back with his question: is virtue one or many?

Protagoras admits that all virtues are part of virtue except courage, which is different from the rest

This of course is the cause of his later undoing

Socrates proceeds to argue that a man who took up fighting if he did not know how to fight, would be considered foolish, not brave, and that, therefore, bravery and wisdom are the same thing

Protagoras turns the argument around and says something to the effect that, according to Socrates, since bravery requires courage, which requires strength, then strength would be wisdom, which is not the case

Since at this stage Socrates asks a different question on the same subject, we are either in the eighth part or in a subsection of the seventh part

Let us say eighth part to avoid complications

Socrates obtains from Protagoras the admission that some men live well and others badly

Then he proposes that to live well is pleasurable and to live badly unpleasurable, in other words, that pleasure is good

Yet, he continues, it is commonly believed that men, even if they know what is right, do what is wrong overcome by pleasure

At this point Protagoras has admitted so much, so Socrates speaks as if he and Protagoras are joined in arguing against common opinion

Since doing what is wrong, the argument proceeds, sooner or later results in pain, then it can be said that men do wrong overcome by pain, or that, since to do the right thing, even if at first painful, will sooner or later result in pleasure, then men do the wrong thing overcome by virtue

In sum, the man who knows puts pleasure and pain in the balance and chooses to do the right thing

[Socrates is not really talking about pleasure and pain but about choices of right and wrong disguised under the terms peasure and pain]

It doesn't matter that either pain or pleasure are not for now but for later: the important thing is that knowing what is right and what is wrong and that virtue is pleasure and vice painful, a man cannot consciously do what is wrong even if doing what is right can initially produce pain

Reason or knowledge or whatever you want to call it--virtue, in sum--does not admit psychological constraints, that is, present pain or a time separation from pleasure

[Now this is not entirely dissimilar from Kant: reason tells us what is right regardless of constraints of any sort

The big difference is that for Kant pleasure is of not account whatever in regards to moral behavior]

In conclusion, to do wrong, or as the hoi polloi would have it, to be overcome by pleasure, is really just ignorance, and since ignorance can be overcome through education, the sophists are absolutely right in their claim that they are able to teach virtue

Then Socrates asks the equivalent of: am I right or am I right?

Now we arrive at either the ninth part or the second subsection of the seventh part

Socrates now equates pain with fear and says that no one in his right mind would pursue fear if he could pursue the opposite course

Now he also recalls what Protagoras said about bravery being different from other virtues and also that he considered the brave courageous

So what, Socrates asks, are the brave courageous about: about what is frightening or about what they consider to be frightening?

They cannot fling themselves at what they consider to be frightening rather than what is actually frightening, because it would the highest degree of ignorance to believe that one can be physically defeated by oneself

Then comes a little twist: both the brave and the cowardly fling themselves at what brings out courage in them

Protagoras merely says that the brave go willingly to war and the cowardly do not want to go to war

But is war good or bad?

War is good

If its good it is also pleasurable, so that the cowardly do not want to go willingly to what is pleasurable, asks Socrates, at which stage any sane man would have laughed him to scorn

But this is not the way Plato wants it

The brave are courageous because they recognize what is good, and when they fear it is with good reason

But the cowardly fear without good reason

Therefore, it is the knowledge of what is fearful and what is not that makes the difference between the brave and the cowardly, and it is not possible to conceive of courage without knowledge or of cowardice with knowledge

Since virtue is knowledge and vice ignorance, as we have seen, then evidently all the virtues are the same: there are no differences between them

They are like the parts of gold

Finally, Plato has Socrates engage in a little bit of playfulness at the expense of Protagoras

He has Socrates say that at first he did not believe that virtue could be taught and that Protagoras held the contrary view, but in the end it turns out that, since he has argued that virtue is knowledge, his previous position was wrong, whereas Protagoras, who argued for the teachability of virtue, has found himself defending the thesis that virtue is not knowledge, hence contradicting his original stance

But all this is is a bit of playfulness, for Socrates actually never said that he did not believe that virtue could taught, only that he was sceptical that the sophists were the persons to teach it

Since the dialogue has been about the unity of virtue and whether it can or cannot be taught, Socrates proposes that they explore what virtue is in order to see whether it fits in with the previous arguments, but Protagoras understandly enough declines

The whole dialogue is rational play, admittedly of the highest order!!!

Santas, "Plato's Protagoras and explanations of weakness"

[The argument for virtue as knowledge in the Protagoras contains at least these maneuvers or steps

One, assuming we can be overcome by pleasure in trying to follow virtue, how can we say that the knowledge of virtue is tantamount to being virtuous?

Two, pain cannot be equated with virtue: virtues produce pleasure

Three, if such is the case, then to be overwhelmed by pleasure means to choose virtue, because pleasure implies a value-judgement

Four, in any event, it is not a question of a wave of irresistible pleasure somehow preventing us from being virtuous]

[But, argues Santas,] "what happens to Socrates' argument and, more generally to the explanations commonly given by the masses, when we interpret `overcome' in the sense Socrates has ignored--that is, the sense in which `overcome' refers to relative strength of the desires (feelings, passions) for or against the alternatives before the agent (rather than to the relative values of the alternatives)?"

"Can Socrates' argument against `overcome by pleasure'...be generalized so as to apply to the other explanations originally mentioned by Socrates--`overcome by' passion, love, pain, fear?'...what principle can take the place of psychological hedonism here?...[T]hat every man desires or seeks (pursues) to get good things and seeks or desires to avoid getting bad or evil things; and the consequent principle that everyone pursues (or desires to do) things which are good on the whole or good in comparison to the alternatives, and seeks to avoid things that are bad in comparison to the alternatives and/or bad on the whole"

"What happens to Socrates' argument against explanations of weakness and, more important, what happens to these explanations themselves when we take `overcome by...' to refer to the relative strengths of the agent's desires for and against the course of action before him?"

What affects the agent in making his choice "is not...a difference in the actual quantities of pleasure and pain...but in the estimated or believed (by the agent) quantities of pleasure and pain"

Hence, once again it is a value-judgement of the type: good/pleasure and bad/pain

Santas soldiers on with the case of Agathon [which is not in the Protagoras], in whom the desire for Athenian pastries is in conflict with the desire not to have Athenian pastries, until finally, because the desire for was greater than the desire against, he has his Athenian pastries

Apparently, what Santas wants to show is a plausible psychological scenario to test against Socrates' theory that no one knowingly does wrong

"It should be noticed at once that an explanation of this kind [in which an agent considers two alternatives and finally acts on the basis of a decision in which the stronger desire wins out] can be perfectly respectable provided that we have ways of determining the relative strength of the conflicting desires independently of knowledge or information as to what action ensues from the conflict. This condition (let us call it A) must be satisfied; otherwise, if our only way of telling which desire is stronger were to wait and see what action ensues, the main principle of the explanation [In every case of conflicting desires (and no interfering motives or external forces) the subject satisfies (acts in accordance with) the stronger desire] would be empty of empirical content, and he explanation would be trivial. Applied to our example, condition A requires that we be able to determine whether [Agathon's desire to eat the pastries was stronger than his desire not to eat them] is true independently of knowledge or information that [Agathon ate the pastries] is true"

[It is not clear why to make the Agathon scenario plausible it must be posited that he can measure the force of his conflicting desires

IOt is not necessary for Agathon to have the measure of his conflicting desires for him either to eat or not eat pastries

But let's let this pass]

"Now so far as explanations of weakness are concerned, it is important to realize that condition A may be satisfied in at least two significantly different ways.

      "One way is to suppose that there is some consistent correlation between the agent's evaluation or rankings of the alternatives before him and the strength of the conflicting desires that attach to these alternatives"

If this is the case, then Plato is right, as Santas argues later:

"Before proceeding to the second way of satisfying condition A I wish to point out an important consequence of the first way of satisfying condition A. If one assumed or supposed...that [In every case of conflicting desires (and no interfering motives or external forces) the subject satisfies (acts in accordance with) the stronger desire] or some version of it is the relevant explanatory principle in cases of conflicting motives or desires or drives, and further that the first way is the only way to satisfy condition A, then clearly the occurrence of akrasia or weakness will appear an impossibility to him (or, at least, akrasia will appear inexplicable). For in cases of akrasia the agent is supposed to be acting contrary to his knowledge or belief of which alternative is best (or better)--that is, contrary to his own ranking of the alternative; but, given our present supposition, this implies that he acts in accordance with the weaker, not the stronger, of the conflicting motives!"

[However, why should we assume or take it for granted that knowing which is the strongest desire and acting accordingly is good as against evil action?

Only assuming that the strongest desire is always virtuous

All we have here, in Plato as in Santas, is semantical sleight of hand!!!]

Santas has another possibility concerning the Agathon scenario and in this one Socrates' contention does not emerge unscathed

"(II) A significantly different manner of satisfying condition A would obtain if we had ways of determining the relative strength of the conflicting motives independently of any knowledge (or information) of the agent's evaluations or rankings of the alternatives to which the conflicting motives refer and of course independently of information of what behaviour in fact ensues...Now the supposition that sometimes, even quite often, people act against their own rankings or evaluations of the alternatives before them (even though they are not externally forced or compelled to, and have the opportunity to act in accordance with their own evaluations) will not be puzzling at all; for such behavior will not appear as inexplicable"

[The wrong-psychology argument applies here

No one ever judges affects in the cold objective manner assumed here, and if such were the case then affects would cease having motivating force]

Then, out of the blue, Santas argues that it is possible to sustain the case above on the evidence of experiments with animals in which a craving has been controlled through the application of shocks or some kind of painful deterrence

This supposedly proves that it is the strength of desire that determines conduct and not the knowledge of good and evil

The switch to the laboratory is nothing short of breathtaking!!!

"In any case", he says, "the success of the explanatory model in the case of animal behavior seems to point to the possibility that explanations of the same kind, satisfying condition A in the second way (II), can be given of human behavior in cases of conflicting motives"

However, Santas admits that Plato was not conscious of the need to argue against the condition in which it is the relative strengths of desires alone that accounts for choice

"He seems to run together strength and value estimate; when, for instance, he considers an objection that might be understood to imply that strength of desire varies with variations of distance from the object of the desire, he understands it rather to imply that the agent's estimate of the value of the object varies with distance"

Finally, Santas says that there is the hint in Plato of the possibility of psychological compulsion (implicit in "overcome by"), in which case the Socratic thesis holds

"The `wider' issue...in the Protagoras was whether it is possible for men to act contrary to their knowledge of what is best when they can refrain. The `narrower' issue...was whether, assuming that this is possible, the explanation can be that men are overcome by their passions, pleasure, pain, fear, love, and so forth. By interpreting `overcome by' as referring to the value estimates or rankings of the agent, Socrates succeeded in showing that one such explanation leads to contradiction (taking hedonism as a premise). This paved the way to his own explanation (ignorance is what is best) which in effect answers the wider issue negatively, since the explanation cancels out one of the conditions in the description of weakness"

In other words, since there is no such thing as "overcome by", it is not possible to act knowingly against virtue: reason triumphs over any sort of psychological constraint, period

[The basic problem with the arguments in the Protagoras, as in all of Plato's discussions of virtue, is the faulty underlying psychological assumptions

We do not look at alternatives and calibrate pleasure and pain, factoring in distance in time for good measure, and we do not, in choosing, arrive at meticulous prognostications about outcomes

We are never so separated for ourselves: the self is always in the middle of the fray and he is not different from his desires and fears and so on

It could be argued that Plato in these cases is anticipating Cartesian psychological metaphors

Reason, in other words, always has a possessor: it is never an autonomous judge, having nothing to do with the agent, handing down decisions independently of circumstances and prejudices and of all the rest of the complexities of mind and behaviour

What I am saying is that Plato/Socrates try to make ethics independent of psychology and even of society

The dialogues are logical aparatuses about certain terms and concepts, but not really about ethics

And I am therefore saying that we cannot separate choice and behaviour from psychology and from society and that consequently logical discussions about virtue or virtues are more or less useless]

PROLEGOMENOS A PLATON Y ARISTOTELES

La solución qué Platón le dió al problema del sustantivo "ser" consistió en argumentar o argüir que el ser verdadero no es el ser de las cosas, que son sólo apariencias

El ser verdadero es el que tienen las formas

La multiplicidad de las especies y de los individuos no es el ser real

El ser real mantiene su unidad en las formas, a las que da realidad sin confundirse con ninguna de ellas

Esta solución no era satisfactoria para Aristóteles, a quien le costaba creer en el mundo de las formas

A grandes trazos, la solución que el le dio al problema de la multiplicidad de seres está en el concepto de sustancia

El ser es efecto uno, pero se manifiesta en el mundo como sustancia

La sustancia en sus diversas acepciones es la base del concepto de ser

Ser a su vez permite deducir el concepto de sustancia

La sustancia es común a todos los seres

Por medio de la sustancia, es posible a la vez la unidad y la multiplicidad del ser

Además, sustancia le permitió a Aristóteles hablar de la fusión de materia y forma, lo cual, por una parte, servía para explicar que las formas no están en un mundo etéreo sino en las cosas mismas, y por otra parte, permitía postular los modos de ser potencia y acto, con los cuales era posible explicar el movimiento sin violentar la acepción de "estar" o de "estar fijo" que tiene el vocablo ser como verbo: el movimiento son dos momentos diferentes de ser cuya posibilidad se comprende por el concepto de sustancia

El movimiento consistía, según Aristóteles, del paso de la potencia al acto, dos momentos del ser implícitos en la base sustantiva del ser

Estas ideas constituyen el núcleo de la física aristotélica, pero su exposición se halla en la metafísica

En otras palabras, en Aristóteles no hay distinción entre el conocimiento filosófico--puesto que la metafísica también se conoce como filosofía primera--y el conocimiento de la naturaleza y del mundo en general

El estudio del ser de las cosas caía legítimamente dentro de la disciplina de la filosofía

Hoy el estudio del ser cae dentro del dominio de la física y sus ramas, que nada tienen que ver con la filosofía

De ahí que los conceptos con los cuales, partiendo del concepto básico de ser, Aristóteles trató de entender y explicar el mundo no signifiquen nada en absoluto para la ciencia moderna, e inclusive para el pensamiento moderno sin explicaciones previas o introductorias

Otro rasgo que separa el pensamiento filosófico en la Antigúedad Clásica del pensamiento filosófico moderno, es que aquél estaba inequivocamente orientado hacia las cosas mientras que, a partir de Descartes, el pensamiento filosófico moderno se puede orientar hacia la representación en la mente de las cosas

Vista retrospectivamente, la metafísica platónica es una versión pre-cartesiana del idealismo: las cosas están fuera de la mente, pero para captar su esencia hay que ir más allá de éllas, hacia el mundo de las formas

Platonismo es la única manera de categorizar este pensamiento

Es con la razón que se puede llegar a conocer las formas y los sentidos sólo sirven para desviar la atención de lo que es verdaderamente real

La metafísica artistotélica es realista: fuera de la mente hay un mundo en el que existe la lógica y las cosas contienen las formas

La definición de los entes se hace en base a su captación por los sentidos y por la razón

A pesar de las discrepancias fundamentales, Platón y Aristóteles comparten una sola perspectiva fundamental sobre el mundo, y es que es ahí que se pueden descubrir las formas, ahí donde se halla el conocimiento, y no en la mente misma, no en el fenómeno mental de la captación o representación del mundo

Historicamente, entonces, el tema del ser ha sido manejado de estas maneras:

--en los griegos, y particularmente en Aristóteles, como sustancia, algo externo, real, y duradero, que genera los conceptos

--como representación mental en la forma de ideas, siendo, por ejemplo, el ser o la sustancia una idea intuitiva, deductiva, compleja, etc.

--como un término del lenguaje , aunque, en última instancia, derivado de la experiencia

De estas maneras de considerar al ser, emanan los conceptos de realismo, idealismo, empiricismo, etc.

Both Plato's theory of Forms and Aristotle's metaphysics deal with a three-fold problem:

--the psychological problem of how we recognize things and can speak about them and define and categorize them

--the ontological question of the multiplicity of being

--and the metaphysical question of the nature or characterization of reality

Even though their approaches were radically different--and that it is from the work of Aristotle that, virtually accidentally, "metaphysics" derives--both Plato and Aristotle would surely agree that the object of metaphysics are the widest, most fundamental concepts, and that ontology is about what to them was the widest and most fundamental of all of them: the concept of being

Besides the issues related to being and its paradoxical multiplicity, Ancient Greek philosophy also addressed itself to the question of the categorization of reality

Now, this is not much of a philosophical problem today because of the growth and diversification of scientific knowledge and its technological sibling

But neither Plato nor Aritotle could fall back on the vast and immeasurably complex scientific apparatus of our day

How did they go about classifying and categorizing reality?

The self-evident first step in an enterprise of this sort would have to consist in recognizing that we do not in fact think in terms of individual entities, that if we did we would not be capable of generalizations or even of inferences, that our thought is based on ideas, on concepts which can be applied to categories or groups of things

In other words, the categorization of reality already exists before we even think about it, before we even have the concept itself of the categorization of reality Today we know the importance of language for this to be possible, that is, for reality to come to us ready-made so to speak

But the Greeks did not have this idea explicitly

Consequently, they needed a theory to explain how reality comes to be categorized, how it is that we recognize the categories of reality, how the categories come about

PLATO

The dialogues

Britannica                                Marías

Hippias I & II                            Apología

Ion                                       Critón

Menexenus                                 Eutifrón

Charmides                                

Laches                                    Protágoras

Lysis                                     Gorgias

Cratylus                                  Eutidemo

Euthydemus                                Fedón

Gorgias                                   Symposion o Banquete

Meno                                      Fedro

Protagoras                                República

Euthyphro

Apology                                   Teeteto

Crito                                     Parménides

Phaedo                                    Sofista

Symposium                                 Político

Phaedrus

Republic                                  Timeo

Parmenides                                Filebo

Theaetetus                                Leyes

Sophistes

Politicus

Philebus

Timaeus

Laws

Epinomis

The discrepancies in these two chronological lists come down to that: one, Marías ignores the very earliest dialogues; and two, these list reciprocally invert the relative placing of two trios of dialogues: Apology/Crito/Euthyphro and Protagoras/Gorgias/Euthydemus

J. Marías

"¿Con qué problema se las tiene que haber Platón? Con el mismo problema que la metafísica griega tenía planteado desde Parménides: con el problema del ser y el no ser"

"Vimos antes que Platón se preguntaba por el ser de las cosas. Pero resultaba que no tienen ser por sí, sino que lo tienen recibido, participado de otra realidad que está fuera de las cosas. Y entonces Platón descubría las ideas...Es... descubrir el modo de ser de las cosas, descubrir lo que hace que las cosas sean, y por eso, al mismo tiempo, descubrir aquello que puede saberse de las cosas; es decir, lo que son. El problema del conocimiento va inseparablemente unido al del ser, y por eso es estrictamente metafísico...Supongamos que tengo una cosa que voy a conocer. Aquella cosa es un ente; pero, al conocerla no tengo en mi conocimiento la cosa misma...Tengo el ser de la cosa, lo que aquella cosa es; Platón diría su idea. Diría que se trataba de ver una cosa en su idea.

      "En definitiva, nos encontramos con que Platón ha descubierto el ser, a diferencia del ente. Parménides había descubierto el ente, las cosas en cuanto son. Platón descubre el ser, lo que hace que las cosas sean, y encuentra que este ser no se confunde con las cosas. Pero, además de distinguirlos, los separa: las ideas son algo separado de las cosas (absoluto). Y ahora se encuentra con una dificultad gravísima: que el se preguntaba por el ser de las cosas, y ahora ha encontrado el ser; pero no sabe lo que son las cosas...Le falta nada menos que explicar con las ideas el ser de las cosas (Ortega)"

"Dentro de las ideas mismas, se le plantean problemas a Platón...El ser del hombre es la idea del hombre. Este hombre que aquí tengo, ¿es por participción de la idea de viviente, o de la idea de racional? Dentro de la idea misma tengo el problema de lo uno y lo múltiple. ¿Cómo va a resolver Platon esta cuestion? Echa mano de otro concepto enormemente oscuro: la koinonía, la comunidad de las ideas...La idea del hombre está en comunidad con la idea de viviente, con la idea de racional, etc."

"Nos queda un...punto importante: la idea del ente como género. Se trataría de un género supremo. Las demás cosas serían especies sucesivas de ese género único. De este modo se podría hacer una división del ente en género y especies, una división jerárquica, añadiendo sucesivas diferencias. A este punto de vista se opone resueltamente Aristóteles...[cuya crítica] a la teoría platónica de las ideas va a afirmar...algunos puntos capitales: (1) que las ideas no están separadas de las cosas; (2) que el ente no es género, sino lo más universal de todo; (3) que el ente, el bien y el uno se acompañan mutuamente; y (4) que el ser se dice de muchas maneras, y que estas maneras se dicen por analogía"

D. W. Hamlyn

Plato spent some time in Megara with the Eleatics

"The Meno begins as if it were a continuation of the discussion in the Protagoras and Gorgias on whether virtue can be taught...Instead he refers to a doctrine ...that the soul is immortal, has lived innumerable lives and has come to know everything. But when it is reborn it forgets and needs to be reminded of what it once knew"

"The Phaedo...introduces for the first time a doctrine which is completely absent from the Meno--the memory of Forms and ideas...That doctrine...is to the effect that, distinct from particular things, particulr beautiful things, or particular equals, to give the example given here, there is something which is beautiful itself or equal itself and this is to be identified with absolute beauty or equality...In the Euthyphro...a Form is...something that must provide a standard and also be an abstract esssence or universal...As far as concerns the argument in the Phaedo, Plato argues that...whenever we see something as defectively equal ...we presuppose a knowledge of absolute equality, which we cannot have got from experience; we are simply reminded of it by the example. We must then have had that knowledge before we were born, and we must have existed in consequence before being born...So the theory of Forms will provide an answer to the purpose of things, but indirectly and with increased effort. It will do that, presumably, because if all things share in Forms (as Plato tends to put it), they share to some extent in perfection while falling short of it. The world, as Plato comes to put it in the Timaeus, is a mixture of reason and necessity, a mixture of rationality and brute, blind force. But participation in the Forms ensures that there is something rational and purposeful about it"

In Phaedo Plato argues that particulars are defectively equal

But from the knowledge of particulars, it is possible to deduce the relation of absolute equality

Since experience does not exhibit this relation, it must pre-exist in us

Hence, knowledge as recall

Timaeus remits the concept of myths as likely stories, or as foundational explanations where argument stops

From the Republic

"It is worth noting that the distinction between knowledge and belief seems to reserve knowledge for the Forms, so that we have belief only of sensible things. This means in turn that there is no possibility of turning belief into knowledge as the Meno suggested. One must simply replace belief by knowledge, and the scheme of education reflects that fact"

"Analogously [to the social virtues]...there is a virtue attached to each part of the soul--wisdom to reason, courage to the spirited part, and prudence to the appetitive part. Justice in the soul arises when all three parts work together under the guidance of reason. Such single-mindedness is represented as the health of the soul; conflict corresponds to illness"

"[The Parmenides presents] Socrates with a dilemma: if things do share in Forms the latter will become split up among the things or reduplicated; if they do not share in Forms there will simply be two unconnected worlds...In the course of the argument, Parmenides also produces a sub-argument, which has become known, through Aristotle, as the `third-man argument'. If Socrates, Plato, etc. all share in the Form Man, then since the latter is a man it too will share in a Form, so that there must be another Form Man (a third man, apart from Socrates, etc.) and the first-order Form. The same again applies to that, so that there is an infinite regress"

[The theory of Forms from what we see above is both a metaphysical and a psychological theory: it has to do with the ultimnate nature and function of reality and it also has to do with how we recognize things]

"If the Parmenides can be viewed as critical of Plato's earlier views on Forms, the Theaetetus can be viewed in a similar way with respect to his views on knowledge...The `hypotheses' about the nature of knowledge that are considered are that it is (1) perception (construed as the simple receipt of sense-impressions), (2) true belief, and (3) true belief together with a logos..."

"[In the Sophist]...the possibility of Forms blending with each other is formally introduced, but what blending actually amounts to has been the subject of considerable discussion...Both the Statesman and the Philebus add to this the idea that it is order and proportional relations between forms that are important"

ON THE STUDY OF ARISTOTLE

There are diverse ways of explicating Aristotle's philosophy

Why not do it the way he himself did it?

One, because no one knows the way he himself did it: no one, in fact, knows whether the Aristotelean corpus corresponds to what Aristotle actually said or wrote

Two, because Aristotle's system is almost wholly obsolete, so that we can speak of the knowledge of the system, but only seldom of the knowledge in the system

We have no reliable, external, explanatory guidelines, as we would have in astrophysics, to help us determine the rational development of the thought of Aristotle

If Aristotle's corpus is almost wholly archaic and obsolete--inexact and invalid would also be applicable terms--then whatever order he might have put it in would be of no use in our times, and this justifies the need for an approach, a perspective on his work that makes it intelligible to us

There are these ways of approaching or explicating Aristotle

One is to consider him as primarily a philosopher and to place his metaphysical doctrines first, which is what J. Marias does

Among the still valid Aristotelean propositions is the concept of systematic philosophy itself and some of his demarcations or definitions or delimitations of the branches of philosophy

Metaphysics--today as when Andronicus first created the term from his compilation of Aristotle's works--is still the thought which deals in the widest possible concepts and in essential principles and characterizations of reality

Another is to consider his thought as initially explanatory of nature (science), which it, of course, was in its time and for a two millenia after that, which is the approach in D. W. Hamlyn

The third is to establish a concatenation in his thought from its origins in previous debate to his answers and solutions and the way these develop in relation to each other and lead to further propositions, which is the method used by P. Wheelright

I am not claiming these authors are the only ones to use these approaches, not even that they are the best practitioners of such approaches, and I am not saying either that these approaches are reciprocally exclusive

All in fact use the coherent development approach and all must take Aristotle into account as both philosopher and scientist

It is all a matter of emphases

Which approach, though, is in my opinion the most adequate?

I will leave that for the end

ARISTOTLE IN JULIAN MARIAS

Aristotle's thought cannot be understood without the previous problem of being, hence in connection to Parmenides

Additionally, many of his arguments are a consequence of his critique of Plato

All the arguments in the Metaphysics seem to lead to God, which is why it is also considered a theology

Philosophy is the most appropriate, the ideal way to eudemonia, which is usually translated as happiness

But by whichever road one tries to realize oneself in life, the requisite virtues must be acquired through habit and character

ARISTOTLE IN HAMLYN

He agrees on the Plato relationship in Aristotle

But he tends to emphasize the so-called scientific character of Aristotle's thought on nature

The scientific study of nature in Aristotle concern forms and changes

It is in the physics that the existence of God is postulated (first? primarily? more significantly?)

The theory of the four causes amounts to a theory of explanation

The purpose of science is to explain

The four causes are the rule of thumb to that end

Marías places them in the Metaphysics, yet he too says they partake of scientific knowledge

However, upon reflection it would seem that the four causes apply only to concrete, discrete things, and not to entities such as the history of philosophy

In any event, the ambiguities here imply that for Aristotle philosophy was a science

Since however there was no clear distinction between them, it could also be argued that science was philosophical

Julian Marías, Historia de la filosofía (1940/1954)

IV. Aristóteles (384-322 a.c.)

Obras

Hay tres tipos de actividades cognoscitivas: poeticas (poiesis), prácticas (praxis), y teóricás (theoria)

Las actividades poéticas tienen un fin distinto a éllas mismas

Las prácticas se tienen a sí mismas como fin, aunque involucran alguna realidad distinta a la persona

Las teóricas son autosuficientes, como las del pensador

De esta tipología se "desprenden tres tipos de vida y tres modos de ciencia"

"Y ante todo una que no entra en ninguno de éllos, sino que es anterior: la lógica. Esta es...Organon, instrumento, y sirve a todas las ciencias. El Organon de Aristóteles se compone de diversos tratados: Categorías, De interpretatione, Analíticos (primeros y segundos), Tópicos, Refutación de los argumentos sofísticos, y otros pequeños escritos lógicos.

      "Las ciencias teóricas son la matemática, la física, y la metafísica. Las principales obras de este grupo son la Física. el libro Del cielo, el Del mundo, el De ánima y toda una serie de tratados sobre cuestiones físicas y biológicas; y, sobre todo, los catorce libros de la Metafísica o filosofía primera.

      "Las ciencias prácticas son la ética, la política, y la economía, es decir, las de la vida social e individual del hombre. Sus obras principales son las tres Eticas: Etica a Nicómaco, Etica a Eudemo, y Gran ética (la menor de las tres); la Política y los Económicos, éstos de un interés muy inferior, y seguramente apocrífos.

      "Las obras poéticas capitales son la Poética...y la Retórica."

Por lo menos en lo que respecta a la ciencia, la tipología es errónea, como lo demuestran modernamente ciencias como astrofísica y genética DNA, en las cuales la distinción entre la contemplación o la teoría y la tecnología es casi imperceptible

Los grados del saber

El primer grado es el de las sensaciones

Luego viene, exclusivamente del hombre, la empeiría: "Es un conocimiento de familiaridad con las cosas, de cada cosa, de un modo concreto e inmediato, que sólo nos da lo individual"

Hay otro modo de saber más alto, que es el arte o técnica: "es un saber hacer"

"Pero el arte no nos da lo individual, sino un cierto universal, una idea de las cosas; por esto se puede enseñar, porque de lo universal se puede hablar, mientras que lo individual sólo puede verse o mostrarse"

Este tekhnê nos da el qué de las cosas, y aun su porqué, pero sólo conocemos algo plenamente cuando lo sabemos en sus causas y en sus principios primeros. Este saber sólo nos lo puede dar la sabiduría, la sophía...La ciencia, el saber demostrativo se llama en griego epistêmê...Pero los principios no son demostrables...por eso hace falta una intuición de ellos, y ésta es el noûs, otro momento esencial que, con la epistêmê, compone la verdadera sabiduría. Y con esto llegamos al grado supremo de la ciencia, que tiene por objeto el ente en cuanto tal, las cosas en tanto que son, entendidas en sus causas y principios"

La metafísica

Aristóteles define la filosofía primera como la ciencia que considera universalmente el ente en cuanto tal...la llama también ciencia teológica o teología...la define en otros lugares como ciencia de la sustancia"

"Hay diferentes tipos de entes. En primer lugar, las cosas naturales...la naturaleza es el principio del movimiento de las cosas...Las cosas naturales son...cosas verdaderas, pero se mueven, llegan a ser y dejan de ser...Hay otro tipo de entes que no se mueven: los objetos matemáticos...existirían en la mente, pero no fuera de ella...¿Cómo tendría que ser un ente para reunir las dos condiciones? Tendría que ser inmóvil, pero separado, una cosa. Ese ente, si existiera, se bastaría a sí mismo, y sería el ente supremo...a este ente llama Aristóteles Dios...La ciencia del ente en cuanto tal y la de Dios...son una y la misma...Este ente...es vivo...Pero además ha de bastarse a sí mismo...por tanto, Dios tendrá que tener una vida teorética, que es el modo máximo del ser...[Pero] el hombre para llevar una vida teorética necesita del ente, necesita las cosas para saberlas...Sólo si esa theoría se ocupase en sí mismo sería suficiente; por eso Dios es pensamiento del pensamiento"

Sólo Dios puede tener sophía: el hombre sólo puede tener filosofía, "una cierta amistad con la sophía. Aristóteles dirá que para que el hombre sea filósofo...es menester que tenga..un hábito, una manera de vivir"

"En tercer lugar, la metafísica como ciencia de la sustancia...el ente es uno y múltiple...el sentido fundamental del ser es la sustancia...Los demás modos dependen de éste...En todas las formas del ser está presente la sustancia, y por tanto, ésta no es algo distinto del ente en cuanto tal y de Dios, sino que el ente como ente encuentra su unidad en la sustancia"

Los modos del ser

"Aristóteles dice concretamente que el ser se dice de cuatro maneras. Estos modos son los siguientes: (1) el ser per se o per accidens; es decir, por esencia o por accidente; (2) según las categorías; (3) el ser verdadero y el ser falso; y (4) según la potencia y el acto...Si decimos, por ejemplo, que el hombre es músico, esto es por accidente...el hombre es viviente...no accidentalmente, sino por su esencia...Las categorías son los diversos modos en que el ser puede predicarse ...: sustancia (p.e. hombre), cantidad, cualidad (p.e. color), relación (?), lugar, tiempo, posición, estado (calzado), acción (corta), pasión (le cortan) ...Estas categorías tienen una unidad que es justamente la sustancia...Algo es verdadero cuando muestra el ser que tiene, y es falso cuando muestra otro ser que el suyo...Verdad es el estar descubierto, patente...la falsedad es un encubrimiento del ser...Por último, el ser se divide según la potencia y el acto...el acto es anterior (ontológicamente) a la potencia; como la potencia es potencia de un acto determinado, el acto está ya presente en la misma potencia ...La idea de actualidad se expresa en Aristóteles con dos términos distintos: energeia y entelequia...energeia indica la simple actualidad, entelequia significa lo que ha llegado a su fin, a su telos, y por tanto supone una actualización"

La sustancia

"Sustancia se dice en griego ousía...la sustancia es ante todo cosa, algo separado independiente, que existe por sí y no en otro. Y el modo fundamental de la sustancia es la naturaleza, porque hemos viste que consiste en el principio del movimiento, en aquello que constituye las posibilidades propias de cada cosa.

      "Pero hay varias clases de sustancia. Ante todo, tenemos las cosas concretas, individuales...Son las sustancias en sentido más riguroso, las que llamará Aristóteles sustancias primeras. Pero tenemos otro tipo de entes, que son los universales, los géneros y las especies...no son...cosas separadas...tendrá que distinguirlas como sustancias segundas...Se interpreta la sustancia como un compuesto de dos elementos: materia y forma...El ente concreto es el compuesto hilemórfico, y se llama también synolon. El universal es forma, pero no está, como las ideas platónicas, separado de las cosas, sino presente en ellas, informándolas...Los universales son sustancias, pero abstractas, momentos abstractos de cada cosa individual, y por eso se llaman sustancias segundas.

      "Hay una estrecha relación entre la materia y la forma y la potencia y el acto. La materia es simplemente posibilidad, es potencia que sólo se actualiza informándose; no tiene, pues, realidad por sí misma. Por esta razón, Dios que es pura realidad actual, no puede tener materia, porque no tiene mezcla de potencia y acto, sino que es acto puro. Esta teoría es la que permite, por primera vez desde Parménides, resolver el problema del movimiento.

      "Recordaremos que los graves problemas que se debatían en la filosofía griega eran dos, en íntima relación entre sí: el de la unidad del ser y la multiplicidad de las cosas, y el del movimiento...Hemos visto que la primera parte del problema encuentra su solución en Aristóteles admitiendo que el ente es uno, pero a la vez múltiple, mediante la analogía, que concilia y resuelve la aporía...Moverse o cambiar es llegar a ser y dejar de ser. Todo movimiento supone dos t_rminos, un principio y un fin. Esta dualidad es imposible ontológicamente, si el ente es uno...El movimiento era imposible desde Parménides, porque se lo entendía como un paso del no ser al ser o viceversa. La teoría de la analogía del ente hace ver que se trata del paso de la potencia al acto; es decir, que nos movemos siempre en el ámbito del ser uno y múltiple. Con esto alcanza su solución madura, dentro de la filosofía helénica, el problema crucial del movimiento, y resulta posible la física como disciplina filosófica, porque puede hablarse, desde el punto del vista del ser, de una naturaleza.

      "Para Aristóteles, la ciencia...hace conocer las cosas por sus causas y principios...Estas son cuatro: causa material, causa formal, causa eficiente, y causa final...La causa eficiente es...quien hace la cosa causada...Dios es el primer motor inmóvil...Su misión es hacer posible el movimiento, y más aún la unidad del movimiento...hace que haya un universo. Pero no es creador...El Dios de Aristóteles está separado, y consiste en pura theoría, en pensamiento del pensamiento o visión de la visión..."

[Este concepto sólo puede ser fruto de la conciencia como el conocimiento del conocimiento]

"Como vimos, Platón consideraba el ente como género supremo. Este género se dividiría en especies, que serían las diferentes clases de entes...Hay muchos modos de ser, pero no son especies, sino, por ejemplo, categorías, flexiones del ente, y el ser está presente en todos estos modos, sin confundirse con ninguno de ellos. Aristóteles dice que el ente es lo más universal de todas las cosas, y las envuelve y penetra a todas, sin confundirse con ninguna"

Lógica

"El lógos [palabra y razón] dice lo que las cosas son, y tiene una estrecha relación con el ser. Los principios lógicos, por ejemplo, el de identidad, el de contradicción, etc., son principios ontológicos que se refieren al comportamiento de los entes"

" El tratado de las Categorías, con el que se inicia la Lógica aristotélica, estudia en primer lugar los términos...El tratado Interpretación o Hermenéutica distingue, ante todo, dos clases de palabras: el nombre y el verbo...pero no todo logos es enunciación, sino sólo aquel en el cual reside la verdad o falsedad; es decir, la afirmación y la negación...Los Primeros Analíticos contiene la teoría aristotélica del silogismo...El silogismo se opone en cierto sentido a la inducción; ésta, aunque a veces aparece como un procedimiento de raciocinio, reductible al silogismo (inducción completa), tiene un valor de intuición directa que se eleva de la consideración de los casos particulares y concretos a los principios; las cosas inducen a elevarse a los principios universales...Los Segundos Analíticos están centrados en el problema de la ciencia y por tanto de la demostración. La demostración lleva a la definición, correlato de la esencia de las cosas, y se apoya en los primeros principios, que, como tales, son indemostrables y sólo pueden ser aprehendidos directa e inmediatamente por el noûs...Aquí culmina la lógica aristotélica. Los dos últimos tratados, los Tópicos y los Argumentos sofísticos, son secundarios y se refieren a los lugareas comunes de la dialéctica, usados en la argumentación probable, y el análisis y refutación de los sofismas"

La física

"La física tiene por objeto los entes móviles. Comparada con la filosofía primera o metafísica, es filosofía segunda...Aristóteles tiene que ocuparse en el libro I de la Física de las opiniones de los antiguos, especialmente de los eleáticos, que niegan la naturaleza...Para los eleáticos no existe el movimiento ...Aristóteles tiene que reinvindicar...la realidad del movimiento, y establece como principio y supuesto que los entes naturales...se mueven: lo cual, añade, es evidente por la experiencia o inducción ...Aristóteles distingue los entes que son por naturaleza y los que son por otras causas...Son entes naturales aquéllos que tienen naturaleza; y por naturaleza entiende Aristóteles el principio del movimiento o del reposo, inherente a las cosas mismas. En este sentido, la naturaleza es sustancia, aquello de que la cosa puede echar mano para sus internas transformaciones.

      "Dados estos supuestos, Aristóteles tiene que establecer su teoría de las cuatro causas y plantear sobre todo el problema del movimiento, al hilo de la doctrina de la potencia y el acto. El movimiento, como actualidad de lo posible en tanto posible, consiste en un modo de ser que determina el paso de ser en potencia a ser en acto, en virtud del descubrimiento artistotélico de que el ente no es unívoco, sino analógico, y se dice de muchas maneras.

     "Después Aristóteles tiene que estudiar los problemas físicos del lugar, el vacío, y sobre todo el tiempo, definido como "el número del movimiento segun el antes y el después". El estudio detenido de los problemas del movimiento lleva a Aristóteles a inferir el primer motor inmóvil (Dios), que, por ser inmóvil, no pertenece a la naturaleza, aunque es clave de ella, y cuyo estudio no corresponde, por tanto, a la física--si bien tiene su puesto en la problemática de esta disciplina--, sino a la filosofía primera o metafísica, que es, como vimos, ciencia teológica"

Tenemos pues que Dios es inmóvil, sustancia, forma, y actualidad

La doctrina del alma

      "El alma es el principio de la vida; los entes vivos son animados, frente a los inanimados. Vida es, para Aristóteles, el nutrirses, crecer y consumirse por sí mismo. El alma es, por tanto, la forma o actualidad de un cuerpo vivo. El alma informa la materia del viviente y le da su ser corporal, lo hace cuerpo vivo...Lo que define al ente animado es el vivir; pero el vivir se dice en muchos sentidos, y por esto hay diversas clases de almas; Aristóteles distingue tres: la vegetativa, única que poseen las plantas, y que se da también en los hombres y los animales; la sensitiva, de que carecen las plantas; y la racional, privativa del hombre...El hombre posee sensación, que es un contacto inmediato con las cosas individuales, y constituye...el estrato inferior del saber; la fantasía, por medio de la memoria, porporciona una generalización; en tercer lugar, la facultad superior es el noûs o entendimiento. Aristóteles rechaza la doctrina de las ideas innatas y de la reminiscencia o anámnesis platónica; sustituye esta metáfora por la de tábula rasa. Pero junto a este entendimiento pasivo introduce Aristóteles el llamado noûs poetikos o entendimiento agente...`Este entendimiento--agrega--es separable, impasible, y sin mezcla, y que es por esencia una actividad...Sólo una vez separado es lo que es verdaderamente, y sólo esto es inmortal y eterno'...Como la ciencia y la sensación son, en cierto sentido, lo sabido o lo sentido en ellas, puede decir Aristóteles que el alma es en cierto modo todas las cosas"

La ética

"El bien supremo es la felicidad. Pero de un modo aún más claro que en Socrates, se distingue la eudaimonia del placer o hedoné...es la plenitud de la realización activa del hombre, en lo que tiene de propiamente humano. El bien de cada cosa es su función propia, su actividad, que a la vez es su actualidad...cuál es la del hombre sin más...Esta forma de vida es la vida contemplativa o teorética, superior, desde luego, a la vida de placeres, y también a la regida por la poiesis o producción y a la vida simplemente práctica, p.e. la política. Pero Aristóteles advierte que para que esa vida teorética sea la felicidad, es menester que ocupe realmente la vida, `porque una golondrina no hace un verano, ni un solo día, y así tampoco hace al hombre dichoso y feliz un sólo día ni un tiempo breve'...Esta forma de vida teorética es, en cierto sentido, superior a la condición humana, y sólo es posible en cuanto hay algo divino en el hombre ...Aristóteles divide las virtudes en dos clases: dianoéticas o intelectuales, virtudes de la dianoia o del noûs, y virtudes éticas o más estrictamente morales. Y hace consistir el carácter de la virtud en el término medio entre dos tendencias humanas opuestas; p.e. el valor es el justo medio entre la cobardía y la temeridad; la liberalidad, entre la avaricia y la prodigalidad, etc...Aparte de esto, el contenido de la ética artistotélica es, principalmente, una caracterología: una exposición y valoración de los modos de ser del hombre, de las diferentes maneras de almas y de las virtudes y los vicios que tienen"

D. W. Hamlyn, The Penguin History of Western Philosophy (1987)

Aristotle

Logic

"Aristotle is perhaps best known as the founder of formal logic--of, in his case, the theory of the syllogism...The Prior Analytics gives a formal exposition of the theory of the categorical syllogism (where the premises and conclusion make categorical assertions) as well as a certain treatment of modal syllogisms (where the premises and conclusion state that something is possible or necessarily so), of hypothetical syllogisms such as those found in the reductio ad impossibile (if p, then q; but q is impossible; therefore not p), and some other arguments which do not strictly conform to the pattern of the theory of the syllogism.

      "Despite what I have said above about hypothetical syllogisms, Aristotle's logic is a logic of terms; the arguments are valid or invalid according to the relationships between the terms involved. Later logic, as introduced by the Stoics in particular, was propositional, concerned with relationships between propositions without reference to the terms they contain"

Science

"For Aristotle, science proper is an investigation of the forms that nature takes...For him, as for Plato, nature has form; it contains species. It is indeed species that are the persistent aspects of nature, particular things being to some extent or other transitory...Form is not something quite separate from nature; it is Plato's suggestion that it is so separate that Aristotle objects to. It is matter, the stuff of which particular things are made, that is responsible for those deviations from the norm that do occur, although matter also delimits the kinds of forms that are possible. Not anything can be composed of anything, just as not anything can come to be from anything. Given all this, the task of the scientist is to discover the form in the variations for which matter is responsible; and to discover that form is to discover what is necessarily so for things of that kind...The aim of the scientist is therefore to show that things fall into such relationships, and thus why they are as they are"

[Among other things, the theory of forms both in Plato and Aristotle is about recognizing things: about conceptual ability

What they say is that it is nature that contains the clue to the recognition of things

In fact, though, the ability to recognize things is something that develops in humans and animals from birth, although of course it could not develop without the existence of the world

But in any event it is not merely the result of the existence of forms in nature]

"The last chapter of the Posterior Analytics presents the issue of the acquisition of knowledge from the point of view of the individual coming to have the knowledge in question. It is a passage in which Aristotle seems to have Plato's doctrine of recollection in mind, and he finds that...absurd...To solve [the problem] he presents an account in terms of what in this century has been called `genetic epistemology'...Repetition of sensations produce, if they persist, perception, repetition of these produces experience, and repetition of that knowledge...Hence it is that many of Aristotle's works in different areas of knowledge start from an appeal to particular cases or even beliefs about such cases...Aristotle sometimes calls this procedure `dialectical'"

[What this actually means is starting from any premiss that permits discussion]

"The study of nature is the study of change in natural bodies and of the concepts that are involved in our understanding of such change--concepts such as those of place, time, the void and the infinite. The work called the Physics is a compilation of discussions of such things, and ends with...[an] argument for the existence of a prime mover--something that is responsible for movement of other things without being moved itself. Aristotle thinks that such a prime mover is called for if change or motion is to exist at all", an argument that can be compared to the cosmological argument..."Aristotle says that change is the actualization of the potential qua potential...given adequate causality, things will move or change in conformity with their potential, which is inbuilt through the matter of which they are composed. They cannot move or change of themselves in any direction whatever. The form of change that they undergo is the actualization of what they have the potentiality to do...the actualization of any potentiality depends on there being a cause of that actualization; and such a cause must be actual. Thus, as Aristotle frequently says, although potentiality may be prior to actuality in the individual, actuality must be prior to potentiality in nature at large. The same is true of the relationship between form and matter. It is arguable whether Aristotle believed in matter without form, so-called prime matter, but every particular thing is a combination of form with matter, and comes about via the imposition of form on matter, which may already have some form, but not that particular form. Hence once again form is prior to matter in nature at large in the sense that form needs to be presupposed to explain how things are"

[Actuality and potentiality, matter ands form, go together: one cannot be thought of without the other

However, actuality and form have the primacy of determining the other: actuality is cause, form makes perception and conceptual thought possible

In a combinatory sense, matter is the potential which becomes actuality through the imposition of form]

In Physics also Aristotle "sets out the different sorts of things that are taken to provide explanations...The four `causes' are: (1) `that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists' (the so-called material cause--the matter of which something is composed); (2) `the form or pattern, the definition of the essence' (the so-called formal cause); (3) `the primary source of the change or coming to rest' (the so-called efficient cause); (4) the end or that for the sake of which (the so-called final cause)"

[Another explanatory scheme is: the origins of things, the things in themselves, and the function or purpose of things: past, present, and future, so to speak]

Metaphysics and ontology

"Towards the beginning of his Metaphysics (a title given to a collection of Aristotelian works in the ancient library at Alexandria--it means `the work that comes after the Physics'), Aristotle lists, as one of the problems to be dealt with, whether there can be a general science of being-qua-being as well as particular sciences concerned with this and that"

[According to Hamlyn, Aristotle managed to say `yes' after his supposed discovery of the doctrine of focal meaning

However, Hamlyn also says that in Aristotle the study of being and its modalities had already been undertaken before he found focal meaning to justify ontology

He suggests that this study was directed at a refutation of Plato's theory of forms]

"The doctrine of focal meaning is the doctrine that in some cases of homonymy [words that are the same but refer to different things, as in the doctrine of causes] there is an explanation for the same use of the word, although with different senses, in terms of the focal role performed by one thing or one use in particular. Thus different things, for example climates, people, symptons, are called `healthy', although not in the same sense, because they are related to health in different ways. Health thus provides the focus for the use of `healthy'"

"Aristotle applied this doctrine to the notion of `being' in two stages. In the first stage the various things that are said to be are all related to what is called substance, this being the primary kind of thing. Hence Aristotle can say at the end of the first section of Book VII of the Metaphysics that the question which was asked of old and is continually raised even now, and is always the subject of doubt, `What is that which is?', is really the question `What is substance?'. For while there are various kinds of things that exist, they are all subsidiary to substance. In the second stage, exemplified in the rest of the Metaphysics VII, Aristotle applies the same treatment to the notion of substance. Various things are called `substance', and for various reasons, but they must all be related to something that is substance in a primary way. Aristotle seems to suggest that the conditions for being substance in this primary way are satisfied only by God. That is why the study of God (and, Aristotle thinks, of that which approximates the divine in us, that is reason) is the study of substance par excellence, and the study of substance is the study of `what is' par excellence, so that theology becomes in a certain sense equivalent to the study of being-qua-being.

      "The beginning of this extended treatment of ontology is to be found in the Categories, a work which Aristotle may have written while still in the Academy and before the theory of focal meaning had been elaborated. It is again a dialectical work in that it appeals to our intuitions at crucial points...words mean things ...Words form propositions through combinations of names and verbs, as Plato pointed out, and as is repeated by Aristotle in the De interpretatione (which is a companion piece to the Categories). If we take the notion of a subject of discourse...Aristotle notes that there are two sorts of relations that things predicated of that subject can have to it: they can be said of it, or they can inhere in it. The latter Aristotle defines in such a way that to be in a subject a thing must be in it though not as a part, and must depend on it for its existence...It is clear that things which are neither said of nor in a subject are the prime candidates for being subjects themselves, although Aristotle does not draw that conclusion explicitly. They are particular things, particular substances, as he comes to call them...

      "Given these, Aristotle goes on to consider what questions can be asked about them...: `What is it?', `How big is it?', `What sort of thing is it?', `Where is it?', and so on...The answers specify substance, quantity, quality, place, and so on. These Aristotle calls categories. The word `category' literally means `predicate'"

[The fact that substance is here a predicate, but is also a subject for predicates, seems to imply an inconsistency

But it is possible to have substance as both subject and predicate]

Hamlyn tries to explain the incosistency in another way

[In Topics] "Aristotle supposes that we may take a particular thing and ask what it essentially is. The widest answer, the widest predicate that applies essentially to the thing in this way gives its category: substance, quantity, quality, and so on. Thus if you take a man and apply this method you get the answer `substance'; if you take a magnitude of a cubit, you eventually get the answer `quantity'; and if you a white colour, you get the answer `quality'. As a method for arriving at the list of categories it is sadly defective, because it is clear you have to know what sorts of things there are, what categories of things, in order to know what things you may start from..."

"Aristotle lists ten categories, although in some places he mentions only eight, and the work called the Categories sets out to provide an extensive discussion of each of them in turn, trying to distinguish them and point to their peculiarities, beginning with substance. Since they are categories of beings, and, as Aristotle says clearly elsewhere, being does not constitute a genus with species distinguished from each other by defining characteristics or differentia, it is not possible to produce differentia for each of the categories, properly speaking...[what he seems to mean is that the categories do not produce species out of being; Marias is much clearer on this subject]...we are invited to agree that there are these ten sort of questions to ask about a particular substance...the nature of our thought about the world implies that the primary subjects of our thought are particular substances, and that although there are also other kinds of things--colours, shapes, places, etc.--they are dependent on particular substances. Indeed, Aristotle asserts plainly that if there were no particular substances, none of the other kinds of things would exist.

      "Some part of the motivation of the doctrine may be a desire to combat Plato, whose theory of Forms Aristotle thought ontologically extravagant. Indeed, one of the arguments that Aristotle uses against Plato in Metaphysics...is to the effect that there ought to be Forms of substances only (and not Forms of, say, beauty and goodness), because the Forms are substances and there ought to be an essential relation between the Forms and the things that participate in them"

[It is obvious that despite what Hamlyn says in keeping with the commentators of Aristotle, the latter never had any doubts about the possibility of a science of being, for this knowledge is implicit in the Categories]

"There is no reference to `focal meaning' in the Categories. The invocation of that doctrine in later work, for instance Metaphysics, gives additional credence to the theory of categories. According to that doctrine of meaning, qualities etc. are said to be because they are dependent on substance. Substance (and the Greek word ousia has an etymological connection with the verb `to be' that the translation of `substance' does not) is called `what is' in the primary way, and the things in the other categories are so called only because they are of substance. This completes the first stage of the general argument.

      "The second stage starts from the recognition that although by the previous argument the question `What exists?' gets its primary answer by reference to particular substances, there are different uses of `substance' also. Indeed, in Metaphysics VII.2 [which we saw before in connection with God] Aristotle typically surveys the various things that people are likely to call `substance' and from this survey abstracts four mains candidates to the title--essences, universals, genera, and subjects...only something which is identical with its essence--something the nature of which is exhausted by what it is essentially and so is, as Spinoza was to put it much later, causa sui, its own rationale--deserves the title of substance in its full sense. No compound of matter and form satisfies that condition...So the argument points towards an identification of substance with form...In the subsequent discussion, Aristotle eliminates genera and universals as having a genuine title to substancehood, simply because they are general, and eventually returns to the notion of form via a consideration of the question `What makes a thing what it is?' It is substance that makes a thing what it is, and this is its form...the tenor of the argument has been towards the conclusion that substance, properly speaking, must be particular and identical with its essence. Only God satisfies that criterion...He is pure form, without matter or potentiality, and so his nature is entirely exhausted by what is essential to him; he is also particular. Aristotle does not explicitly point this out in Metaphysics VII, but God is described in this way in Metaphysics XII, and, as we already noted, Metaphysics VI.i points to the equivalence of theology and the science of being-qua-being, of which this has all been a part...In the end Aristotle's conception of the relation of the world to God is not dissimilar to PLato's conception of the relation of the world the the Forms"

[In summary, substance means the things that are, substance is form, and substance essence, and substance is God]

The soul

"Aristotle takes as fundamental the belief common to the Greeks that the soul is the principle of life. Hence inquiry into the soul is ipso facto an inquiry into different forms of life. Aristotle recognizes the inclination to think of the soul as a substance, but claims that it is substance only in the sense of form. [So?] Indeed he defines the soul as the form of a living body equipped with organs; it is form qua a capacity to manifest the various activities that life consists in. The basic form of life is to be found in plants, which simply nourish themselves, grow, decay, and reproduce; hence the basic form of soul consists in the capacity to do these things, and all forms of life manifest it. With animals there is in addition the capacity for sense-perception and in the case of most, but not all...the capacity for movement. In human beings there is all that plus the capacity for thought and reason. Hence living things form a hierarchy with man at the top, and it is this hierarchical arrangement which makes it so difficult to give a single illuminating definition of soul....In perception, Aristotle says, the object is initially different from the sense-organ but becomes like it in the process of perception; or...in sense-perception the sense-organ receives the form of the object without its matter...Between perception and reason lies imagination, which Aristotle sees as dependent on perception but as involving thought also...If literally anything can be an object of the intellect, then if the formulæ applicable to sense-perception are to be applicable here as well, the capacity cannot be realized in anything at all. Otherwise it would be impossible to think something of that kind, since the bearer of the capacity must be unlike the object before the thought. It follows that there can be no organ for the intellect, and the intellect is literally `nothing actual before it thinks'...the thesis that there is no organ for the intellect is derived not from any physiological theorizing, but from the thesis about the unrestricted nature of its capacity.

      "There is, however, a problem of how in that case the capacity is ever actualized, since there can be no causal principle that explain that actualization. Hence in De anima, in a much disputed, and certainyl textualy corrupt passage, Aristotle posits the existence in the soul of a so-called `active reason'. This always thinks, and is responsible for the actualization of the capacity, the so-called `passive reason', that we have been concerned with up to now. Because of its nature, the active reason must of necessity have a certain independence from the body, and it survives when the body decays...The relation of this active reason to us is somewhat like the relation of Aristotle's God to the world. Neither seems personal in any sense that we can underrstand; they are similar in that they both involve thought, but their main role is in each case to provide a metaphysical underpinning for what they explain"

The Ethics and Politics

"Aristotle begins with the observation that every action is thought to aim at some good, and goes on to consider whether there is some good which is desired for its own sake and not for any further good...It is eudaimonia...it is to be well endowed, to be, one might say, blessed, and Aristotle realistically notes that this entails being equipped with at least a modicum of material goods. After some critical consideration of other opinions on this, including that of Plato, Aristotle seeks to elucidate the notion via a consideration of the function of man. Eudaimonia is associated with the proper fulfillment of that function--with, one might say, human flourishing...Aristotle comes to define the good for man--the eudaimonia that men aim at...as the activity of the soul in accordance with excellence (the best form of life, we might say). The word here translated `excellence' is arete, the quality that Socrates was so much concerned with. If we translate it `virtue', we run the risk, as with Socrates, of begging the question. Do we mean by `moral virtue' the sort of excellence that Aristotle was talking about? Did he himself mean by `excellence' moral virtue? The difficulty in answering these questions arises from a lack of certainty about what morality actually amounts to. On certain conceptions of morality there is little about morality in what Aristotle has to say. He is simply clear that there is such a thing as the good life in some sense of those words and that a man is thought eudaimon, happy, to the extent that he attains it...For the attainment of the good life we need the right character, something which Aristotle believes is produced by training; but we also need practical wisdom, which is generally attainable through teaching.

      "Hence, when, after a certain amount of moral psychology and consideration of deliberation and choice, he comes to practical considerations about the good life, he defines virtue as a mean between extremes as regards passions and actions. It is a mean which is relative, however, and is to be determined by a man of practical wisdom...the attainment of the mean, it is important to note, presupposes both the right state of character acquired through training and the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom that only teaching can provide"

"He works his way through the various virtues more or less systematically and devotes a book to justice...There is a chapter on intellectual virtues...There is a treatment of akrasia or incontinence, the falling short from what we know to be required of us. In this Aristotle starts by expressing puzzlement about Socrates' claim that there is really no such thing, but ends with a resolution of the problem that is remarkably Socratic

      "There are two discussions of pleasure and its place in the moral life, in which Aristotle's conception of pleasure as an activity bears considerable analogy to his conception of eudaimonia. Just as eudaimonia is a feature of a whole lifetime, so pleasure is not just a transitory state but a feature of a whole course of action or activity...Finally, Aristotle returns to the good for man, and [urges]...the claim of philosophical contemplation to this title. This is because of his view that what is specific to man is his intellect, and that what human excellence must in the end consist in is the virtue of intellect"

Philip Wheelwright, Aristotle (1935/1951)

"When opposite qualities are regarded as having real membership in the universe, the problem of motion (kinêsis) takes on a different aspect. How to explain, for example, the cooling of a warm liquid. In the earliest examples of Greek speculative thinking this question took the form: what has become of the quality hot, which was but no longer is; and whence has come the quality cold, which was not but now is?...Heraclitus of Ephesus...announced...that cold does not come from anywhere nor the hot go anywhere, but the hot actually `turns into' the cold, i.e., that the quality hot (not merely the object in which the heat resides) ceases to be hot and becomds cold...Hence Heraclitus' bizarre paradox that hot and cold, and in general any two opposite qualities, are one and the same...The doctrine of forms (eidos) or archetypes (idea)...although offered in part as a refutation of Heraclitus' extreme relativism, was nevertheless based upon an acceptance of his fundamental paradox. Of the world of sense...Plato admits that opposites intermingle...But this signifies only that sense-experience is evidently not a valid medium of truth...Its findings...are not completely false, nor its objects completely non-existent, as the Eleatic philosophers--Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus--had taught...[E]ach particular object of sense bears a certain likeness to the arhcetype in which it participates..."

"Aristotle's problem was to formulate a theory of being and a theory of change that while avoiding the pure relativism of Heraclitus (which Aristotle interpets as an impossible denial of the law of contradiction) on the one hand, should at the same time avoid the metaphysical extravagance of the Platonic theory of archetypes...The form (eidos) is not anything apart from particular objects, it is inherent in their very matter (hyle)...When by means of memory the perceptions are long preserved and (as happens in the case of man alone) multiplied and compounded to a considerable degree, there grows up a rational order of thought, which, viewing each new experience in the light of previous experiences thus preserved, multiplied, and compounded in memory, discerns the universal characteristics shared by them. This is the original inductive or abstractive process...by which, as we carry it forward to embrace still wider classes of particulars, we come to apprehend the general characteristics of `forms' (eidos) of things, which serve as the `first principles' (archê) of our subsequent demonstrations."

      "Now, what are the general characteristics of things, which we come to know by the abstractive process just described? The first phase of Aristotle's answer is expressed in terms of his doctrine of categories. To know a thing is to grasp its `articulable meaning' (logos)--i.e. what can be said about it...These are the categories: the ten ways in which anything can be said to be.

     "The most crucial of them is ousia, which has a twofold significance. Ousia is, in the first place, the hypokeimenon, the logical subject, about which any of the ten types of assertions can be made: considered in this aspect it is what Aristotle calls `primary ousia'. But suppose we ask what the subject that we are thus talking about essentially is. The fact that we can significantly ask this question indicates the second logical aspect of ousia. `This' (ousia in the primary sense, or substance) is a man, a horse, an olive: in such a predication we specify the `what' of `this'--ousia in the secondary sense, the essence. Thinghood in the sense of essence, of what a thing most specifically is, thus falls naturally into the predicate of a sentence. In that sense it can be handled by the technique of logic: it can be defined, and it can be employed as the middle term of a syllogism. But in the primary sense, as the natural subject of predication--the `this' of which other concepts are predicated--it cannot be used logically, nor predicated of anything further, but must be directly grasped as a brute fact of sense-perception."

      "So far we have been regarding thinghood (ousia) from a purely logical point of view. `Things', however, are not merely logical subjects of discourse; they are also real entities having membership in the world of nature (physis). As such, they fall within the province not of logic but of `natural science' (physikê): it is no longer their definition alone that is to be considered, but also their actual character and activities, together with the `factors that determine' (aitia, or aition these. Our point of view shifts, from considering a thing as a `logical subject' of which certain meanings may be predicated, to considering it as a `material basis' (hylê) of actual events--as a `specific thing' (ousia) possessing certain capabilities (dynamis) of `motion or change' (kinêsis).

      "If a thing's actual character fulfilled all the implications of its definition--e.g., if a man, defined as a rational animal, were in the fullest measure to realize everything that both `animal' and `rational' connote--it would be `complete and perfect' (teleios) of its kind, and hence divine"

"Thus, we might perhaps say, in reply to Heraclitus, that there is no absolute becoming--except in a relative sense...we recognize, or at least postulate, the existence of an entity that persists throughout the change and whose persistence makes the change intelligible...Change (kinêsis) is conceived by Aristotle as movement from a `starting-point which is also a determining principle' (archê) to an `end which is also a goal' (telos)...At each stage of the process the form or proper nature of the thing is present largely as a potentiality (dynamis); the `fulfillment, realization, or actuality' (entelechia) of that ideal nature is progressive, and never quite complete so long as the process continues ...Accordingly Aristotle defines motion (kinêsis) in general as `the fufillment of a potentiality qua potentiality'"

"There are, Aristotle finds, four types of `determining factor' (aitia), i.e., four ways of being `responsible' (aitios) for the existence or occurrence of anything"

[Aristotle asked: what causes motion?

We ask what causes bodies to fall or heat to pass from one body to another or planes to lift off, but we never ask Aristotle's question as such]

"An infinite regress of particulars is for Aristotle an inadmissible supposition, if not, indeed, self-contradictory and meaningless. Every process must have its archê--i.e., its first step or temporal beginning, which serves also as its original explanatory principle"

Summary of Nicomachean Ethics

EUDAIMONIA

Eudaimonia as the supreme good of man

All human activities aim at the good, never at the bad or evil

Since statecraft has as its object the good of all, it necessarily must aim at man's good, and not at the soldier's or the cobbler's good alone

However, we are speaking here in ideal terms

The practice of statecraft gives foot to disagreements

What is the good towards which the individual and the state aspire?

Eudaimonia, or happiness, is the good that all desire

Eudaimonia implies both living well and doing well

[This distinction relates to the distinction between having and doing, to which Aristotle refers more than once

The distinction suggests the metaphysical potential/actual distinction]

Sound moral training as a precondition for eudaimonia

The presupposition for achieving either condition, that is, for living or for doing well, is sound moral training, and it is also from sound moral training that a knowledge of statecraft can be achieved

The types of lives that man can lead

One of the subjects of disagreement concerning living well, eudaimonia, statecraft, and so on, is the sort of life that is best for man

Aristotle says there are three possibilities: a life of physical pleasures, the political life, and the contemplative life

Living well cannot consist in the possesion of goods, since these are means and not ends in themselves, and eudaimonia is good in itself, in fact, it is the end of all ends to which men aspire

Man's proper function, as the achievement of eudaimonia, involves logos and the virtue proper to logos

Man's proper function, then, that which human life is all about, possibly also that which man must try to do--although, since individuals naturally seek the same basic goal, the imperative and the declarative here are approximately the same--is to achieve eudaimonia

Since man is rational, his proper function must have to do with logos

[Else where he refers to nous

Logos would seem to be be the actuality of nous]

The right way to do things is called virtue

Virtue is to do this or that in the correct manner

Therefore, man's proper function is to live according to the virtue proper to his rational nature, that is, to logos

But not only must man have virtue, he must also employ it, and its employment is pleasant, good, and noble

The possession of external goods as necessary for eudaimonia

However, eudaimonia also requires the possession of external goods, since a miserably poor individual can by no stretch of the imagination be said or considered to be happy

VIRTUE

The nature of virtue

At this point Aristotle says that he is going to enquire into the nature or the being of virtue

[This is a surprising move

He has been making all sorts of statements about a life according to virtue, yet here he is tacitly admiting he doesn't know what virtue is!!!

There are various possibilities

One is that the development of the argument is wrong, but the founder of formal logic cannot be accused of being so blatantly illogical

Another possibility is that the presentation is wrong, perhaps because of the vicissitudes of the original corpus

And then there is another possibility: Aristotle did not believe in the Plato/Socrates thesis that to know a thing you must define it with precision

It may be that he assumes that he knows virtue and he simply has not bothered to define it

But the so-called Socratic fallacy is not quite as fallacious as it is made out to be: it is true that one can make knowledgeable statements involving concepts that we cannot immediately define with precision, but it is hardly accurate to build entire chains of argument on undefined fundamental concepts

There is definitely a lack of coherence here!!!

I would incline to attribute it to body-of-work problems, and of all the issues raised by Wheelwright, I would probably think the notes-for-lectures thesis the most likely

A philosopher can get away in his living, lecturing person with tampering with the order of development of an argument, but in writing the standards are different]

Types of human virtues and the doctrine of the mean

[Here Aristotle puts behind him the virtue-of-logos theme and explores virtue as being of all of existence]

Man has both rational and irrational aspects

The vegetative and concupiscent are irrational

Therefore, virtues can be intellectual (wisdom, understanding, sagacity) or moral (liberality, temperance)

[The clear implication here is that the purely moral virtues have to do with the irrational aspect of man]

The intellectual virtues can be taught

The moral virtues are made possible from habit

But in all cases either deficiency or excess lead to the denial of virtue

The relation of pleasure and pain to virtue

Pleasure and pain are necessarily related to virtue

[But some reasoning in relation to the affects and ethics is inconsistent

Aristotle argues that it is a virtue to avoid bodily indulgence--hence, the contrary of pleasure is a virtue--but it is cowardice to go into battle with fear--hence, the contrary of pleasure is not a virtue, because the coward's going into battle, despite fear and pain, is presumably no virtue at all

This probably has to do with the intellectualist Socratic concept of pleasure

Two incidental observations here

One, Aristotle even blamed a man for absent-mindedness

Hence, he was something of a will-power fascist

Two, in Ancient Greece there was no coffee, no smoking, no TV and no movies

Consequently, it was easier then than it is now to conceive pleasure as haviong a moral value

What moral value can our trivial yet sometimes harmful pleasures have?]

Pleasure and pain are necessarily related to moral virtue, and therefore, inferentially not to intellectual virtues, or at least, not in so clear a manner

Relating this to the proposition that the moral virtues are possible from habit, then it is possible to understand how education can consist in the association of virtue and pleasure and evil and pain

But from this to that the entire Nichomachean Ethics is about this education process, as Burnyeat claims, is an unjustified leap

Aristotle touches on the issue but he does not reduce all ethical issues to this particular issue

Character and virtue

Other necessary concomitants of virtue are a firm and stable character and the correct spirit or state of mind

This means that the practice of philosophy per se will not create virtue

Virtue is a result of dispositions or of character (or dispositions of character)

The virtue or proper excellence of man

Virtue permits goodness in the sense that it allows man to perform his proper function well

"The virtue or proper excellence of man will be just that `formed disposition' which both makes him good and enables him to perform his function well" [which presumably will make him happy]

[The distinction between being good and acting well again suggests the distinction between potential and actual]

[Again he is not dealing with the virtue of logos alone, but with the virtue of man]

The good performance of man's proper function involves the mean, which Aristotle compares to a good work in the sense that nothing can be taken from it or added to it

Virtue as what a good man does

Virtue then is a kind of moderation involving a mean between excesses

Another definition he uses is that virtue is acting "according to such a principle as a man of insight would use"

Then he cites examples such as proper pride which is the mean between vanity and pettiness and modesty which is the mean between hubris and shame

Virtue and "casuistics"

However, Aristotle also engages in "casuistics" when he posits situations in which the mean is not attainable and one must choose the lesser of two evils

He also mentions the need to judge conduct according to "each occasion" and the possible "ignorance of particulars" as having an influence on decisions about behavior

CHOICE

[This is where the question of free will/determinism arises

According to P. Huby, this was not really an issue for Aristotle

She traces the perception of the problem to Epicurus' awareness of the deterministic implication of Democritus' atomism, and his idea of the "swerve"

The Stoics take up from Epicurus and Lucretius remits the Epicurean doctrine]

Will, choice, and acting against one's better judgement

He admits the possibility of acting against one's better judgement either from compulsion or ignorance

In compulsion the person contributes nothing to action

The moving principles of will "lies in the agent"

Purposive choice is held to be intimately bound with virtue

Choice then implies behavior that is in the agent's power, and since this is the definition of willing, choosing and willing are equivalent concepts

Choice and deliberation

Choice entails logos and thinking

[Since logos necessarily involves thinking, the distinction can only be justified on the basis of logos as potentiality, in the analogical sense of possessing and of employing virtue, or also in the sense in which we can distinguish between living well and doing well]

Since thought means deliberation, choice then is deliberation towards voluntary action, or voluntary action with deliberation

Choice is opposed to action from the prompting of organic nature, from mechanical necessity, or from chance

But choice involves nous and human agency

[On the definiton of nous as reason, and assuming human agency to be devoid of content, this is a pre-Kantian perspective, for Kant identifies freedom with reason]

Choice, in sum, implies indeterminateness

Deliberation per se refers to means as opposed to ends: one deliberates about means but not about the ends

The scheme is a first choice involving ends, and then deliberation as the choice of the means to achieve ends

What ought to be wished

Next Aristotle considers wish

The ideally good man enters here again, for it is this ideal figure that defines what ought to be wished

[Throughout this work, Aristotle works his way to definitions and then appends the observation that those definitions of virtue are exemplified and sometimes even confirmed by the behaviour of the virtuous man

What wishing has to do with ethics is not quite clear

However--and this is very significant--the Nicomachean Ethics is a systematic, cohesive work, but it is also about the definition of terms

Again, even though Aristotle is dealing here with concepts and definitions, he uses references to concrete facts like slaves and the "gait of a proud man"

He currently speaks of truth but he never defines the meaning of truth in the context of a treatise about "ought" rather than "is" propositions]

The intellectual virtues

[Here he is back on the virtue-of-logos question]

Concerning the intellectual virtues, Aristotle begins by specifying the forces of the soul as sensation, nous, and desire

Intellectual virtues apply to nous, desire, and choice, so as to make possible the definition of choice as deliberate desire

Nous reveals truth and in connection to desire it identifies right ends

The choice of right ends, then, results from a reciprocal relation between nous and desire

Choice, nous, and character

Choice is the principle of action

Choice involves nous and moral disposition (character)

Choice can be defined either as intelligence that desire or desire that reason

The virtue of nous is a character disposition towards truth

The faculties of the soul that lead or reveal truth are: practical technique (technê), scientific understanding involving the syllogism and hexis (epistêmê), sagacity (phronesis), and wisdom (sophia)

The general definiton of nous is apperceptive intelligence

BAD CHOICE

How the individual deviates from what is best

The individual always seeks what is best

Ignorance prevents achieving what is best and experience is the cure for ignorance

Aristotle now assumes that the akratic man is indeed ignorant

So he asks: what sort of ignorance is it, assuming that despite rational knowing man can choose badly?, and he concludes that it is passion that prevents the ignorant from achieving what is best

So it is possible for an individual not to seek what is best if he is under the influence of passion

To seek what is best it is necessary to know what is best

To know is either to have knowledge or to have it and contemplate it

[This distinction, which again could involve potential/actual, presumably explains how passion can obnubilate the individual

However, the mind is a hypermachine: we are always using our knowledge and every part of mind is always active

This for one implies determinism

It also constitutes a refutation of Kant: we possess our rationality, and consequently, it is not ever the case that rationality can act free of the circumstances of its possessor, the contrary of this being a Kantian postulate

Aristotle admits the possibility of the obscuring of reason]

The individual or agent can act in a wrong manner

This can happen even when he has the knowledge of what is right, but it would be quite astounding to act in that way when he possesses and contemplates the knowledge

[In these arguments involving having and doing Aristotle seems to be skirting a rudimentary conception of the threshhold of consciousness

Kant maintains precisely the opposite thesis when he says that even the evil man admits the correctness of ethical behavior, the possibility itself of ethics from the operation of reason

We have three clearly different views here: the Aristotelian view that admits the obnubilation of reason; the Kantian view that makes reason an absolute; and my own point of view, in which reason is always to some extent influenced by subjective circumstances]

In passion, then, according to Aristotle, it is possible to ignore the knowledge of what is right, even when the akratic man has the knowledge, for such knowledge would be like an actor reciting his lines

To further develop his idea, Aristotle uses the syllogism, in which a major premise and a minor premise give way to a conclusion or inference

The minor premise is "not universal and is not considered an object of scientific knowledge in the same way as the universal term"

The application to akrasia is as follows:

--major premise: evil is to be avoided

--minor premise: this is evil

--inference: this is to be avoided

The akratic man ignores the minor premise and cannot draw the necessary inference

Hence, Aristotle concludes from this that Socrates was right about the akratic man being the victim of ignorance

Friendship

Aristotle has an exaggerated, introspective view of friendship

Friendship is more important than the law in holding the state together

He also makes friendship akin to love and love can only exist for what is loveable

Virtues make possible the perfect friendship

Under a tyranny friendship is distorted

Pleasure and pain

Men equate pain with evil and pleasure with the good

Pleasure consists in the use of our faculties, such as the senses

Pleasure is enhanced where our faculties are in good condition and directed towards a worthy object

But, as in the case of wishing, he defines pleasure in terms of what gives pleasure to a good man

He also says that this opinion is the generally current one, which goes to the argument that the Aristotelean ethics are in great part a matter of defining terms on the basis of their usage

[Here once again Aristotle is referring to the virtue of a man's life (hexis)]

Eudaimonia

In conclusion, activities are undertaken for themselves and as means towards ends

Happiness is an end, an activity which is sought for its own sake

Good habits (hexis) and virtue are the defining terms of the good man

[But at this point he returns to the virtue of nous]

Happiness is an activity involving the virtue proper to nous

The best type of activity for happiness is a contemplative life, which entails autarkeia

But for the full achievement of happiness it is also necessary to have the necessaries of life and to be in this state for the complete term of life

[The contrast between the two concepts of happiness or the good life is fully brough out here

So which is it: the life of the good man or the life of the philosopher?]

Eudaimonia and polity

The activity of the statesman aim towards ulterior ends, but these are crucial to the achievement of happiness for the proper sort of laws are what produce hexis, which is the source of virtue

The knowledge necessary for the proper sort of laws comes from natural ability and empeiria (experience)

[The implicit exclusion in this treatise of explicit criminal behaviour, means that Aristotle is talking about right action in a social context and according to implicit social rules

There is no question either of anti-social behavior or of a Decalogue-type morality

The important thing for Aristotle is not individual action but the set of all actions which is what makes happiness possible]

Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, ed, Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (1980)

"Introduction"

"There is considerable scholarly debate about whether the Nicomachean Ethics forms a continuout whole: there is some evidence that the central `common' books--Books 5-7--really belong to the Eudemian Ethics; and there is a consensus that the NE is a compendium of lecture notes"

"The Ethics begins with the question `What is the good for man?' After a dialectic survey of opinion on the subject, it presents the claim that eudaimonia ...is the good for man. Happiness is then defined as an activity of the soul in accordance with rationality and virtue, with human excellence. But since there are different types of excellence, the question arises: which is the best and most complete? Does happiness consist in an active and comprehensive practical life or in the exercise of man's highest and best faculties, those for contemplation?"

[According to Oxenberg, Aristotle is positing alternatives]

"The definition of virtue is offered in Book 2: virtue is a dispositional characteristic, a hexis concerning actions and reactions (pathe) involving choice; it consists in acting in a mean relative to us, a mean that is defined by a rational principle of the sort followed by a person of practical wisdom. The substance of Books 2-6 consists of an analysis of the components and consequences of this definition"

"Since Book 6 leaves us with a strong identification between virtue and practical wisdom, the question arises whether Aristotle has returned to Socratic intellectualism and whether he must treat all forms of wrongdoing as involuntary ignorance"

"...[T]he discussion of pleasure in Book 7 is meant to continue the discussion of akrasia: it provides an explanation of why the akrates forgets what he knows"

"...Books 8 and 9, the extended discussion of friendship and its function in developing and exercising the self-reflective traits of the virtuous"

"Because Aristotle still needs to establish that the virtuous life is happy and that it brings the goods and satisfactions traditionally associated with eudaimonia, he returns to a discussion of pleasure in Book 10...There are still some questions to be settled: the claims of the theoretical life as the most virtuous, happy life...Book 10 ends with a transition to the tasks of the statesman, the tasks of constructing the sort of polity in which the citizens can lead virtuous lives"

Thomas Nagel, "Aristotle on Eudaimonia"

"The Nicomachean Ethics exhibits indecision between two accounts of eudaimonia--a comprehensive and intellectualist account. According to the intellectualist account, stated in Book 10, chapter 7, eudaimonia is realized in the activity of the most divine part of man, functioning in accordance with its proper excellence. This is the activity of theoretical contemplation. According to the comprehensive account (described [elsewhere] as `secondary'), eudaimonia essentially involves not just the activity of the theoretical intellect but the full range of human life and action, in accordance with the broader excellences of moral virtue and practical wisdom. This view connects eudaimonia with the conception of human nature as composite, that is, as involving the interaction of reason, emotion, and action in an ensouled body"

[According to Nagel, Aristotle is not positing alternatives, but actually appears undecided

But is "undecided" incompatible with "alternatives"?

What Aristotle seems to be pursuing are two different lines of enquiry, not alternative answers to one question]

M.F. Burnyeat, "Aristotle on learning to be good"

"Given this temporal perspective, then, the real problem is this: how do we grow up to become the fully adult rational animal that is the end toward which the nature of our species tends? How does reason take hold on us so as to form and shape for the best the patterns of motivation and response which represent the child in us, that product of birth and upbringing which will live on unless it is brought to maturity by the education of our reason? In a way, the whole of the Nicomachean Ethics is Aristotle's reply to this question..."

"Aristotle knew intellectualism in the form of Socrates' doctrine that virtue is knowledge. He reacted by emphasizing the importance of beginnings and the gradual development of good habits of feeling. The twentieth century, which has its own intellectualism to combat, also has several full-scale developmental psychologies to draw upon. But they have not been much drawn upon in the moral philosophy of our time, which has been little interest in questions of education and development"

[This is definitely not so

Development is the keynote in behaviorism and in such philosophers as J. Dewey, Quine, and Honderich

But is this development related to morality?

Not in terms of a Decalogue-morality, but definitely if morality is conceived in social terms, which is implicit in all the cases mentioned]

L.A. Kosman, "Being properly affected: virtues and feelings in Aristotle's ethics"

"The question of moral choice in the deepest sense finally concerns questions of creating the conditions which our actions and our feelings may be as we would wish them. These conditions include our states of character--the virtues--which we acquire through the complex practices of our moral life. So long as we consider moral questions in terms of individual moments in the agent's life, we will not be able to understand this fact. This is why it should be clear that questions of virtue and feeling as moral categories are importantly connected"

T.H. Irwin, "Reason and responsibility in Aristotle"

"Human responsibility depends on human capacity not merely to choose actions but to choose to act on one or another desire in the light of some more general plans and aims constituting some overall conception of the agent's good"

[These "general plans and aims" and this "overall conception", however, are not the individual's doing, but society's

This, if anything, is perfectly pellucid in Aristotle]

What finally is the good life about?

Is it leading the life a good man would lead?

Or is it a life of autarchy?

Close with this

Paradoja socrática: Laques y Prótagoras

La Etica a Nicómaco

Kant: Etica, deber y ley moral

Filosofía de la historia e historia de la filosofía

Proyecto de tesis

Problemas a los que va dirigida la tesis

Su ubicación histórica

Derivaciones de los problemas

Metodología de investigación

Metas de la investigacion

THE SOCRATIC PARADOXES

Paradox one

Virtue is knowledge but Socrates does not know

Paradox two

Knowledge does not necessarily lead to virtue

Paradox three

You either have all the virtues or none

Paradox three

If all virtues are the same, it is not possible to give a definition of any individual virtue

Paradox four

You must define a thing in order to know it

Paradox five

Socrates and Plato are antithetical

And Plato himself is antithetical

Protagoras (gist)

Socrtes: virtue is not teacheable

Protagoras: virtue can be taught

Socrates: is virtue one or many?

Protagoras: virtues are different

Socrates: Since virtues are teacheable they all involve wisdom

They have one contrary

Since a contrary can only have another contrary, virtue is one

Protagoras: courage is different from all the other virtues

Socrates: a man who does not know how to fight yet engages in fighting, would seem to be courageous, but in reality is not courageous but a fool

Courage therefore requires the wisdom to know when to fight

Protagoras: Since courage requires anger, if courage is wisdom, then anger is wisdom, so Protagoras maintains his view on the exceptionality of courage in the sense of not being wisdom

Socrates: pleasure is virtue and pain is vice

It is impossible for man do wrong by being overcome by pleasure, for this is to do wrong by being obercome by virtue

Therefore, man does wrong from ignorance, and since ignorance can be overcome by instruction, virtue is teachable

Protagoras insists on the exceptionality of courage

Socrates: a courageous man flings himself at what is really fearful

Supposing the fearful were painful and that it were possible to avoid it, a man would be mad to fling himself at it

Yet the coward refuses to go to war

The courageous man knows something the coward ignores

The brave are courageous because they recognize what is good, and when they fear it is with good reason

But the cowardly fear without good reason

Therefore, it is the knowledge of what is fearful and what is not that makes the difference between the brave and the cowardly, and it is not possible to conceive of courage without knowledge or of cowardice with knowledge

Since virtue is knowledge and vice ignorance, as we have seen, then evidently all the virtues are the same: there are no differences between them

They are like the parts of gold

Laches (gist)

Laches and Nicias disagree on whether courage can be taught

Socrates enters the debate and says that in order to teach a virtue it is necessary to know it

Since virtue itself is too large a theme, he proposes that the others, who are generals, define courage

Laches defines courage as not budging from your lines in face of the enemy

Socrates cites the Scythians and the Spartans at Platea to disqualify this definition

He says he wants a definition of courage under all circumstances (medical, social, political, and so on)

Laches comes back with fortitude of soul

Socrates has him admit that fortitude allied to wisdom is good but unwise fortitude is bad

Then he asks him to say who is more courageous: the fighter who knows he is on the stronger side or the fighter on the weaker side?

Laches says the latter, and Socrates of course pounces pointing out the contradiction: the more courageous in this case is bad and the less courageous good

We know courage, says Socrates, but we seem unable to define it

Then it's Nicias turns and he admits that courage is a form of wisdom or science: the science of the frightful and the fortunate

Laches spars with Nicias arguing that according to such a definition the diviners would have to be considered the most courageous

Socrates takes up the term science used incautiously by Nicias: science, he says, includes the knowledge of the past and of the present and of the future

Therefore, when they define courage as the science of the good and the bad past, present, and future, what they are defining is not courage but all of virtue, and all of virtue is of course not courage, so they have not defined courage

Every one marvels and Nicias asks Socrates to take his son as pupil, but Socrates demurs because he says he has just proven that he does not even know how to define courage

[Yet it is from a supposed knowledge of virtue that he has disqualified the definition of courage]

NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

Eudaimonia

The purpose of man is to achieve happiness

Virtue is needed to achieve anything

The proper goal of man's life must involve logos and the virtue of logos

Hence,here Aristotle would seem to incline for the contemplative life

Virtue

There are intellectual and moral virtues

Moral virtues are dispositions of character towards moderation

This implies that the practice of philosophy per se will not bring happiness

And in line with this, virtue is moderation and what a good man does

The intellectual virtues originate in a character disposition towards truth

Hence, here Aristotle is inclining towards the full life and not just a life of dedication to theory

Choice

In this part is where Aristotle properly speaking deals with moral questions and specifically with good and bad choice

To start with, man has will and can choose

Choosing necessarily involves reason, which is a pre-Kantian position

Choice is deliberation towards voluntary action

But choice also involves moral disposition

These considerations, therefore, apply equally to the full life of the good man and to a life of philosophical contemplation

Bad choice

Aristotle starts by questioning Socrates' claim that if man knows the right way he cannot do the wrong thing

But quickly enough he concedes that it is ignorance that makes evil and the question is how this is possible

He has two answers

Evil man has the knowledge but he does not "contemplate it", which is like an actor reciting his line but not believing in them

The other explanation is based on the syllogism

The akrates knows the major premiss (evil should be avoided), but he does not admit the minor premise (this is evil), so he does not deduce the right moral conclusion

In either case, his knowledge is deficient and so ignorance is the cause

Friendship

It cements society

Flourishes in a well-ordered polity, withers under tyranny

So in what does eudaimonia consist?

Aristotle gives two answers: good habits and virtue (moderation) make the good life, but also a contemplative life involving autarchy

He ends by stressing that the good policy makes hexis (good character) possible

It would seem to me then that Aristotle has dealt with two things: the possibility of moral behavior (with an explanation of akrasia) and the right way to live

The best life is ultimately that of thinking, but this life is not devoid of moral content and would not be possible without good character

Only a philosopher's ego would find incompatibilities where there are none

KANT AND THE METAPHYSICS OF MORALITY

Common rational knowledge (law in general)

Morality is to act from duty

Duty implies obedience to law in general or in the abstract

The principles of law in general or in the abstract is to act so that our maxim can be a law for all men

Popular moral philosophy (the categorical imperative)

Reason determines will towards action according to the moral law

Will therefore is practical reason

At all events, reason and will are intimately conjoined, although will is not necessarily always amenable to reason

The command of reason to will is called an imperative, which is hypothetical if what it commands is to be obeyed for the achievement of an objective and categorical if what it commands is the realization of the action itself

The categorical imperative is to act so that our action can be described as a universal moral law and, since natural laws are universal, as a natural law

But the categorical imperative is not itself a law

What is the law that it commands?

It must be such as to be consistent with it and unobjectionable from any side

Metaphysics (the practical moral law)

Reason intuitively tells us that such a law is that man should always be treated as an end and never as a means to an end

But the same conclusion can be derived through reasoning

The categorical imperative is a manifestation of will and will dictates action as unconditional obedience to will

Since man is will, the action will dictates must be unconditionally referred to man (not obedience but respect or some such notion)

The law that the categorical imperative contemplates must refer to man and to nothing else: hence, man as an end in itself

Reason then objectively directs will towards the categorical imperative and the practical moral law

Reason acts under no constraint other than itself

Since will is practical reason, it can be said that will gives itself the law, and this is what is called autonomy of will

Autonomy of will is morality

Alternatively: morality originates in the autonomy of will

And autonomy of will is the categorical imperative and the practical moral law

We have arrived at this conclusion from the rational examination of the concept of morality as was found in common rational knowledge

This conclusion is a priori and synthetic: a priori because it is not founded on examples from experience and synthetic because the concept of morality does not include the concept of autonomy of will

We have been engaged in speculative reason, but speculative reason merely derives concepts and it does not make morality obligatory

Practical reason, on the other hand, should make morality obligatory

Critique of practical reason (the obligatoriness of morality)

Autonomy of will presupposes freedom

Freedom is, therefore, the basis of morality (see arguments in autonomy of will)

But this proposition is as synthetic as the equivalent proposition concerning the autonomy of will

The presupposition of freedom implies the presupposition of morality

So since we are dealing with presuppositions, why should the moral law be compulsory for man from within himself?

Man belongs to the world of senses

As such he is determined by natural laws

But in supposing freedom man also places himself in the world of intellect, which he anyway glimpses through reason

Since he is subject to natural laws in the phenomenal world, and it is intellect that discovers those laws, then freedom as the definition of intellect has the force of natural law

"Since the world of the intellect contains the basis of the world of sense, and consequently of its laws, and so gives laws directly to my will [as belonging entirely to the world of the intellect], I, as an intelligence, must recognize myself as subject to the law of the world of the intellect...I must regard the laws of the world of the intellect as imperatives and the corresponding actions as duties"

[Isn't he confusing here the thing with the knowledge of the thing?]

However, these are still synthetic propositions and we cannot prove this any more than we can give reasons for man's interest in morality, which exists only because it is possible

"The concept of a world of the intellect is only a position outside the phenomena which reason finds itself compelled to take in order to conceive itself as practical (as having moral import)...But reason would be overstepping all its bounds if it undertook to explain how pure reason could be practical; this would be exactly the same task as explaining how freedom is possible...[Freedom] is valid only as a necessary hypothesis of reason in a being that believes itself conscious of its will"

Conclusion

Reason has taken us this far and we have no foundation for reason other than reason itself

We cannot go any further

Reason is necessarily limited

But we have achieved more than enough in recognizing the limitations of reason

Platonism

(A) Skorupski on Dummett's Origins of Analytical Philosophy (1993)

"Despite Frege's linguistic orientation, he was a Platonist and believed that thought exists independently of language...He took logic and philosophy to be concerned with the analysis of `thought' in the Platonic sense attached to that word. Attention to the working of language is needed...to free us from the myth that meanings are ideas in mind, and the disastrous notion that the laws of `thought' are psychological. But attention to language becomes misleading precisely when it distracts our gaze from the Platonic world of thought as such."

(B) "Many mathematicians--sometimes only implicitly--take a realist view about mathematical truth and the existence of mathematical objects. They hold that the latter exist independently of our thought and hence that mathematical statements are true (or false) independently of our knowledge of them or our ability to prove them. This view is known as Platonism, since it derives from and often includes, Plato's views that the subjects of mathematical statements--numbers--are abstract entities and that, if true, these statements describe relations holding between these entities." (Flew)

Popper

Another candidate for scientific criterion is Popper's falsificationism. According to this argument, scientific propositions are those that can be falsified. Scientific validity can only be claimed for those propositions for which reliable, contradictory evidence can be marshalled. But there are many acceptably scientific hypotheses, e.g., big bang, for which there is no possibility of refutation given the state of scientific knowledge, but this does not invalidate such hypotheses. There may be alternative explanations, but these are often as unrefutable as the theory they implicitly refute, and thus they cannot be considered to be the fasificationist basis for the validation of other theories. In other words, falsification, if it is to work, must work as validation, not merely as justification, and if the only possible falsification for a hypothesis is another hypothesis, for which there is no possible current falsification, then, according to falsificationism, neither one hypothesis nor rival hypotheses are scientific propositions. But in fact they are science!

If falsificationism were to be adopted as the criterion for scientific validity, science would come to stand still, for it means that every scientific hypothesis would be unutterable unless at one and the same time we came up with arguments against its acceptance. For relativity to work as science, Einstein would have had to revert to gravitational theory, but in fact the postulates of relativity are virtually inconceivable from Newtonian physics. In respect of science, the opposite of falsificationism is if anything the more rational, common sense approach. A scientific theory is valid if it cannot be falsified, just as my perception is valid, not because it can be falsified, but because it cannot be falsified. The most that falsificationism can do as a criterion for scientific propositions is to permit a classification of scientific theories as falsifiable and provisionally non-falsifiable, hence it could serve to establish the outer limits of science.

Popper's error lies in having thrown together exact science, probabilistic propositions, and pseudo-science. You cannot falsify probability, but this does not disqualify probabilistic statements as knowledge. And as to the distinction between real and pseudo science, an externalist, transactionalist definition of knowledge is more than sufficient to establish the distance that separates them. Misperception, or the faulty application of the rules of perception, is involuntary. Since it is possible to honestly misperceive, perception is not apodictic. But if there is no intention of deceiving, deliberate misperception is impossible.

Positivism

Positivism is the 19th century doctrine that reality is totally subject to scientific laws and that only scientific laws are knowledge. This doctrine excludes speculation and probabilities from knowledge.

Possibility and probability

Possibility relates to being and probability relates to knowing. Possibility seems to indicate that something was, is, or could be. When from historical data we predicate possibility, we mean that something could be, but this is not a fact, not even a consensus. Between a probability and a possibility the only difference is the abstract nature of possibility. Probable is used to designate an inference that is neither necessary nor apodictic. Possible is just one among many probable inferences. However, a possible inference can also refer to many necessary inferences, as in saying that such-and-such an inference is just one among many necessary inferences. Again, possibility is about being. It is about whether something can or cannot be without prejudging likelihood. However, as we said before, possibility can also be used to indicate a fact as "it is possible to break down perception into its component perceptions". Sometimes it is only the context of use is that can permit us to distinguish between possibility and probability.

Post-modernism

According to Eric James, reviewing Hilary Lawson and Lisa Appignanesi, eds., Dismantling truth: Reality in the post-modern world (1989), the post-modernist perspective is "a radical version of relativism".

Pragmatism

(A) Someone defined pragmatism as "idealized rational decision."

(B) Pragmatism: truth is what works.

(C) In Metaphysical horror (1989), Leszek Kolakowski points out the circularity behind the concept of pragmatism: "Pragmatic thinking, including the utilitarian notion of truth, was supposed to free us from the fetters of metaphysical speculation, by measuring validity by usefulness. But it is easy to see that the concept of usefulness, however conceived--narrowly or generously, psychologically or socially--opens a wide gate through which the same metaphysics and theology can triumphantly return and assert their legitimacy, for one need only argue that they might be at the service of some human needs." (p.52-3)

Predicate logic

Predicates

Predicates can be defined as whatever can be an object of the verb "to be". Consequently predicates are the totality of existents. Whatever can be an object of the verb "to be" can also be a subject of the verb "to be". Since concepts are nouns with an appended "is" or "exists" predicates are concepts.

Private language

(A) Dummett, Origins of Analytical Philosophy (1993)

p24

"Recent writers in the analytical tradition have criticised Frege for his strongly subjective interpretation of sensations and mental images. This criticism stems from Wittgenstein's critique of the private ostensive definition. The critique is aimed at the possibility of a private language, but Witt is not concerned merely to make a point in the philosophy of language: the argument seeks to destroy the conception of the private object that I, but only I, can recognise. To recognise an object when it occurs again is to make a judgement of a particular kind, and such a judgement involves what Frege calls a thought. Witt is in effect assuming that we cannot suppose an object to exist unless it is possible to have thoughts about it, and, in particular, to recognise it as the same again. He is not assuming that all thoughts are expressed in language, but he is assuming that all are expressible in language: if there are private objects, there must be private thoughts about them, and if there are private thoughts, then there could be a private language in which they were expressed."

Page 151:

"Surely a language that is in fact known to only one person is conceivable: you have only to consider the last surviving speaker of a vanishing language."

[Now, either this proposition proves that a private language is possible or the private language argument is simply devoid of realistic, reasonable meaning. What Witt argued would then be the impossibility of a nonsense language, and as he would himself say, this is trivially true.]

p152

A private language is "one that could not be known to more than one individual".

(B) Malcolm Budd on David Pears, The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon) in TLS, February 3-9 1989, p.115

"The conclusion of the private language argument is that it is not possible for someone to make discriminating references to the different types of sensation he experiences without relying in any way on his body or its physical environment." Neurological research on the localization of sensation in amputees shows that this is mistaken. The other measure of language efficacy is "rule following". Wittgenstein apparently thought the first requirement the more basic.

Private philosophy

(A) It is possible to make a distinction between private and public philosophies. The questions this raises have all to do with the concept of a private philosophy, which relates to certain ideas in existentialist thought and in Wittgenstein and Rorty, among others. A private philosophy is purely justificatory: it justifies the subject and it justifies itself without reference to the philosophical tradition. A public philosophy actively seeks validation: it must become public and aspire to achieve validation beyond justification. A private philosophy can, of course, aspire to become public, but it does not necessarily imply, as a public philosophy does, a firm, inescapable commitment to historical validation. It might be argued that no philosophy inhibits itself in this way, but what is really at issue when this claim is made is not so much what the private philosophy claims as what, of its claim, history considers capable of aspiring to validation.

(B) Finally, there is another possibility for validation in philosophy. It is, I insist, only a possibility. We can make a distinction between private and public philosophies on many possible grounds. The most telling is that a private philosophy need not insert itself into public debate: no one is particularly concerned about the way in which others interpret their lives.

[Exception must be made here to accommodate celebrities and morons!!!]

Another reason is that private philosophies are about predictions, i.e., to the extent that they are about what individual lives are about, they must realize themselves in actually occurring individual biographies. Now, events in real life very seldom confirm or validate private philosophies, and herein lies the "flexibility" of such thought: as events transpire we either interpret them in accordance with our private philosophies or we readjust our private philosophies to fit the course of events. Now, this is perfectly valid because private philosophies are meant to help us get through existence as painlessly as possible, but in another sense to speak of validation in reference to private philosophies is to undermine the very essence of the concept of validity.

(C) My own considered opinion is that there is no such a thing as private philosophy. Either our most intimate philosophical beliefs can be made public and debated and declared valid or invalid, or they are worthless. If I believe that my ideas are valid, they must be shown to be valid. This is the darkness that we inhabit when we work in solitude. Either we break out or we sink. Since we can never be sure of breaking out, we must have monumental self-confidence, often stayed by prayer.

The meaning of life is strictly private philosophy. Let's suppose it is a valid issue. There is ample evidence for this. If it is a valid issue there must be something that can be validly asked and validly answered.

During my prayer period, I believed that God could actually do something to favor me. Then, I figured He was not through punishing me for my sins. Finally, I have come to realize that my ambitions and hopes have never so far been in step with my personal facts and the facts of the universe. My prayer period assumed a premise that cannot be defended: that god will change the universe to suit a person's desire. The punishment phase was also un-philosophical. The out-of-whack phase is more realistic. But is any of this philosophy? In fact, it is mostly about myself. Can I not be the subject of rigorous thought? If so, then this, if anything, is private philosophy. And if philosophy is rigorous thought, then private philosophy must conform to philosophical method and it is unlikely that there exists anything that can be called private philosophy.

Probability

Probability is a type of inference. Logical inferences can be apodictic, necessary, and probable. Interpretations are probability inferences. But scientific hypotheses are also probabilities. Neither interpretations nor hypotheses are necessarily valid, yet they are knowledge. How can this be explained? The only sensible explanation is that, within a historical context, i.e., involving the public and transactional character of knowledge, interpretations and hypotheses that are not invalid can be considered valid until found to be invalid, and as such they are a form of knowledge. In fact, if this were not, historical knowledge would be impossible. These explanatory and semantical maneuvers cannot be undertaken with the concept of truth and a phalanx of analytical philosophers could not do away with history.

Program

I can break down some procedure (e.g. installing a stereo deck) into different steps and I can translate those steps into "logical" linguistic descriptions. If I take these descriptions and turn them into instructions I have a program for installing a stereo deck. If I want a robot to do that for me, I cannot use a natural symbolic language because it is understood only by humans. Therefore, I invent an artificial language.

The alphabet of the artificial language comprises not only the alphabet of the natural language but every other sign or instruction that is used to communicate in the written natural language, hence it is much larger than natural alphabet, and in order for a keyboard to accommodate it it is necessary to recur to combinations of strokes. But the signs or symbols of the artificial language are not enough to do a program: it is necessary to have instructions on how the symbols relate to each other, on how they are used and this is what is called the grammar.

In a calculator, for instance, when I want to add one number to another I punch a number, I punch in the addition sign, I punch in the other number, and I punch in the equal sign. The addition and the punch signs are the grammatical or syntactical instructions in the calculator's program. In a word program, after I have finished a text, I can either either erase it or keep it: the respective instructions are part of the syntax. In the mind, those instructions come with the faculty that we call memory. Calculating and writing programs imitate functions of the mind.

If we think of learning a language as a faculty, then it is possible to understand or imagine how the process can be incorporated or formulated as a program, and if a program comes in a computer, then by a mind/computer analogy, we see how the mind could come into existence with a set of instructions for learning a language. More concretely: a child hears sounds, he could have a programa for learning the sounds, he repeats the sounds, he learns the meaning of sounds. But the meaning of sounds does not in itself contain instructions for a grammar, so it is also possible that the child may have a innate program for ordering words into sentences, and so on.

Properties and predicates

Properties define groups of related things. They are what bring together things in groups, sets, or classes. Things in groups, sets, or classes constitute types.

Properties are the same as predicates. Properties and predicates cannot exist outside of symbolic thought. Since non-human animals think, then properties and predicates cannot be exclusive to public, communicative languages. But insofar as they are linguistic, they are expressed in all types of words except perhaps articles, prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions as such. "But" expresses a relation between propositions, but it does not define a class.

Relations are per definiens between classes. Do they create classes in establishing relations between members of classes? This is possible, but is "but" that sort of relation? "I was running but I wasn't tired" defines the class of people that in a certain lapse of time can run without getting tired. But this class is not defined by "but" in the sense that the verb "run" and the adjective "tired" can generate classes. "But" belongs to the class of conjunctions and it is not the only one with its meaning and it certainly does not create the class of conjunctions.

Property dualism

Stephen P. Stich on John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of Mind (MIT) in the TLS March 5 1993

"The brain has two kinds of properties--the subjective and the objective; the objective properties cause the subjective ones, though the subjective effects are quite distinct from their objective causes; consciousness can't be reduced to physical states of the brain, or to behavioural dispositions, or anything else. This all sounds like the doctrine that philosophers call `property dualism'."

"Whereas predicate dualism says that there are two essentially different kinds of predicates in our language, property dualism says that there are two essentially different kinds of property out in the world. Property dualism can be seen as a step stronger than predicate dualism. Although the predicate 'hurricane' is not equivalent to any single description using the language of physics, we believe that each individual hurricane is nothing but a collection of physical atoms behaving in a certain way: one need have no more than the physical atoms, with their normal physical properties, following normal physical laws, for there to be a hurricane. One might say that we need more than the language of physics to describe and explain the weather, but we do not need more than its ontology. There is token identity between each individual hurricane and a mass of atoms, even if there is no type identity between hurricanes as kinds and some particular structure of atoms as a kind. Genuine property dualism occurs when, even at the individual level, the ontology of physics is not sufficient to constitute what is there. The irreducible language is not just another way of describing what there is, it requires that there be something more there than was allowed for in the initial ontology. Until the early part of the twentieth century, it was common to think that biological phenomena ('life') required property dualism (an irreducible 'vital force'), but nowadays the special physical sciences other than psychology are generally thought to involve only predicate dualism. In the case of mind, property dualism is defended by those who argue that the qualitative nature of consciousness is not merely another way of categorizing states of the brain or of behaviour, but a genuinely emergent phenomenon."

From http//plato.stanford.edu

Proposition

(A) Propositions are meanings. They are constituted by parts and all parts contribute to the meaning. Since the relation between words and what they designate is arbitrary, propositions can legitimately be considered the units of meaning. Propositions are not necessarily linguistic, but propositions are necessarily the product of cognition. All propositions are cognitive elaborations. Since meaning is at the heart of cognition, propositions are the cognitive elaboration of meaning. The meanings of propositions have truth value. They can be epistemically or truth-functionally qualified. Propositions are either valid, invalid, or probable. This does not mean that the epistemic qualification of propositions nomologically determines belief.

(B) Classically, a proposition is a linguistic statement which can be affirmed or denied. Propositions are constituted by parts. Can there be propositions outside of language? If we put the definition of proposition the other way around and say that whatever can be affirmed or denied is a proposition, then, since we can affirm or deny our mental contents, our mental contents are literally propositions.

The basis of propositions is their linguistic meaning. There are no propositions without meaning. Can there be meaning without propositions? Theoretically perception is meaningful. Is it propositional? Since mind is meaningful--in fact, the source of the meaning of linguistic propositions--then we can presume that the contents of mind, including perception, must also be propositional.

We must have meaning to have propositions. We must have mind to have meaning. We must have mind to have propositions. But why can't mind have contents other than propositions? Many philosophers argue for images. Even Fodor does not discard imagic thought. Yet even supposing imagic thought, there is no reason not to consider images as propositions insofar as we can affirm or deny them. It is true that we seldom deny the objects of perception, but this does not mean that we cannot on occasions have reasons to doubt perception. Meaning and propositions are virtually synonymous. Mind and meaning are reciprocally dependent. Therefore, mind must be propositional and its contents must be propositions.

The issue of whether mind is propositional or not boils down to whether mind encompasses entities other than propositions, and the answer that we argue for is that whatever entities mind encompasses must be considered to be propositions. Historically, Aristotle called sensations propositions. And functionalism, e.g., Fodor, considers mind propositional. There may be other philosophico-historical evidence.

(C) Mental contents fulfill all the conditions that define propositions: (1) they are meaningful; (2) they are the results of cognitive processes; and (3) they are constantly being subjected to epistemic judgement. Consequently, mental contents are themselves propositions.

Propositional attitude psychology

Propositional attitudes

Propositional attitudes entail that mind is propositional and that propositions are facts or about facts. They refer to the linguistic equivalents of belief, hope, desire, and in general of any attitude of the self to propositions about reality including the self itself and necessarily its propositional attitudes.

Propositional bases and contents

We know most of our beliefs, i.e., it is possible to have an unconscious belief, and this is part of reality and a form of knowledge. But externally we can know the false belief held by someone else and we can also know that our beliefs may be erroneous. In other words, propositional bases, which include propositional attitudes are always valid, but propositional content may be valid or invalid. All awareness is knowledge. Since awareness is meaning, then knowledge must be meaning and vice versa. However, knowledge in this sense is not necessarily knowledge. In order to get out of this rut, we posit that all propositions, whether linguistic or mental, refer to propositional bases and to propositional content. The reference to propositional bases embraces basic-cog's, ascription, and the belief-proposition or propositional attitudes. All propositions necessarily refer to the propositional bases. When we say that propositions refer to propositional bases, we assume indirect reference and we assume that all propositions have causes.

All propositions have propositional content. That all propositions have propositional content means that all propositions refer to reality other than propositional bases. The reference to propositional bases is necessarily valid. In this sense all propositions are valid.

To say that the bases are necessarily valid is for cognition to say something about cognition itself. The essence of this claim is that all propositions necessarily imply or involve cognitive processes. However, specific theories of cognition are not necessarily valid and fall rather in the realm of interpretation. Propositional bases can be implicit. They can be made explicit as propositional attitudes or as the belief-proposition. But propositional bases also include basic-cog's and about basic-cog's we can only have theories. In this case they can be made explicit as theories of cog-processes.

Propositional contents are statements about reality that can be valid or invalid including such statements about propositional bases and themselves. I can say I believe and be lying. I cannot verify conclusively if someone else believes or does not believe. We usually avoid stepping in front of cars, and presumably we have valid beliefs for not doing this. But it may happen that I will step in front of a car despite my beliefs. I can walk about a room without stumbling against chairs. But I can deliberately stumble over chairs even though I have beliefs about walking about rooms. Propositional bases are implicit meaning, although they can be made explicit as propositional attitudes. Propositional contents are always explicit whether as linguistic propositions or as mental content. We can think without believing in our arguments. Propositional contents are what a proposition explicitly says about reality. The propositional content of a proposition, i.e., its reference to reality other than its necessary reference to propositional bases, can refer to propositional bases. It is possible for a proposition to have a reference to propositional bases other than the necessary reference to propositional bases, e.g., propositions about logic. However, this claim does not mean that I have to demonstrate a thorough and infallible knowledge of all rules and all processes of mind.

Propositional calculus

Propositionality

(A) Propositionality is the theory that reality is represented in mind as propositions, by contrast with images and words, although mental propositions are closer to language than to, e.g., paintings or mathematics or, for that matter, music. Although mental propositions are not necessarily linguistic, everything that goes on in mind--and especially the ability to represent reality in propositions--can be described in terms of linguistic propositions.

Propositionality also consists in turning the idea that all of reality can be represented in terms of propositions in mind into the idea that such propositions are themselves the processes of mind. It is the self-evident proposition that in trying to understand mind we cannot go or point to or do anything beyond the justified and valid propositions that we make about mind and what it does. All we can go or point to are more propositions. These further propositions could be distinguished as processes, but they too must be expressed in propositions.

(B) From awareness we infer "squiggles". Neither images nor the public language provide a sufficient and necessary account of thought. Analytical philosophy suggests the possibility that mind is constituted by propositions. Propositions can be representation or expression. Propositions are the units of meaning both in language and mind. Concepts are elementary propositions. Words are the expressions of concepts. Thought like linguistic propositions is constantly being subjecting itself to yes-or-no scrutiny. In sum, all mental contents are propositions whether as representation or as expression.

(C) Language has syntax. Squiggles are rule-bound. That's the way systems are. Mind is a system. Even though the mental system operates with squiggles, which are different from language, language is the only possible way to try to encompass mind. By way of contrast, we do not need language to recognize an object or to cooperate with others in a physical task. We do not need language to drive in traffic. Therefore, the linguistic expression of subconscious cognitive processes are the processes themselves.

The probing of mind is cognition probing itself. The results of such probes are propositions. Since mind is propositional, such propositions are the processes themselves. This means that, even though mind is a cognitive system which functions with squiggles, we can have no other hold on mind beyond the hold that words allow.

(D) The propositional theory of mind, or the necessary approximation to cognition from its propositional description, cannot give a sufficient account of various events. It cannot account for physical affects, i.e., physical pain and pleasure. It cannot consequently account for anxiety and other states midway between mind and body. It cannot as it stands at least account for belief. A description of cognition cannot account for the self. And finally such a theory leaves volition out of the picture. Assuming that a theory of cognition could lead to a theory of mind to account for belief, the self, affects, and volition, this still leaves out physical affects and fundamentally the material basis of cognition. This is a problem even within propositionality itself, for if we posit the subconscious as the "site" of cognition, even without the evidence of our senses and of neurology, we would also have to posit the brain as the basis of cognition. In this situation physicalism is apt to take over and displace propositionality entirely.

(E) In Analysis and metaphysics , P.F. Strawson claims that, on one hand, we have the use of concepts in judgement or belief, and on the other hand, there is reality, the world, the facts, and the state of the latter determines the truth or falsity of the former. But here we can justifiably apply our argument about the dependence of the continuity of perception, not on the world out side of mind, but on the propositionaliarty of mind: the cognitive processes that are constantly active from memory.

Propositional logic

Psychologism

Putnam

 Simon Blackburn on Hilary Putnam (1926-  ), Representation and Reality (1988) 

"Functionalism went beyond behaviourism in supposing that in order to have a belief or other mental state, it would not be sufficient to behave as if one had it; what would be needed was to be in a state with a certain pattern of causes and effects, or in short to embody a certain functional architecture, often supposed specifiable in computational terms. Putnam shows that, given a little physics, for any system behaving as if it had a belief, we can cook up physical `states' sufficient for it to be said to embody any functional architecture we want: any physical system can be regarded as a `realization' of any abstractly described computational system."

 H. Putnam, Representation and Reality (1988)

 "I may have been the first philosopher to advance the thesis that the computer is the right model for the mind. I gave my form of this doctrine the name `functionalism', and under this name it has become the dominant view--some say the orthodoxy--in contemporary philosophy of the mind."

 "Functionalism argued that mental states cannot simply be physical-chemical states, although they are emergent from and supervenient on physical-chemical states; I shall now argue that mental states also cannot be computational states, or computational cum physical states (states defined using a mixed vocabulary referring both to physical and to computational parameters), although they are emergent from and may be supervenient upon our computational states."

"At any rate, the intended contribution of [the first three chapters] to that end is to do two things: 1) to establish a close connection (discovered and emphasized throughout his career by W. V. Quine) between problems about meaning and problems about belief fixation, by showing that the holistic character of belief fixation in science bears deeply on the issue of the individuation of `meanings' (or `contents' or `intentions', as they are called by various philosophers); and 2) to argue that, in fact, thinking of `meanings' (or `contents') as `theoretical entities'--as scientific objects, objects which can be isolated and which can play an explanatory role in a scientific theory--is a mistake. In the course of the argumentation I defend the view that there is no criterion for sameness of meaning, except actual interpretative practice--a view made famous by Quine and Davidson."

"The connection between the epistemological issues just mentioned and questions of reference and meaning is secured by the truth of meaning holism...reference is not just a matter of `causal connections'; it is a matter of interpretation...And interpretation is an essentially holistic matter. A complete `formalization' of Interpretation...is as utopian a project as a complete `formalization' of Belief Fixation'.

 "I can now restate this point in a somewhat different way: knowing what the words in a language mean...is a matter of grasping the way they are used. But use is holistic; for knowing how words are used involves knowing how to fix beliefs containing those words, and belief fixation is holistic...[I]nterpretation is an essentially holistic matter."

"Chapters 5 and 6 build on the previous material, especially onthe arguments for meaning holism. The purpose of these chapters is to argue that mental states are not only compositionally plastic (the same `mental state' can, in principle, be a property of systems which are not of the same physical constitution), but computationally plastic as well--the same mental state (e.g., the same belief or desire) can in principle be a property of systems which are not of the same computational structure. Mental states cannot literally be `programs', because physically possible systems may be in the same mental state while having unlike `programs'."

Putnam has arguments which can serve to reinforce the thesis of intuitive logic.

"What Gödel showed is, so to speak that we cannot fully formalize our own mathematical capacity because it is part of that mathematical capacity itself that it can go beyond what it can formalize. Similarly, my extension of Gödelian techniques to inductive logic showed that it is part of our notion of justification in general (not just of our notion of mathematical justification) that reason can go beyond whatever reason can formalize."

Putnam has arguments which imply a refutation of artificial intelligence. One goes roughly as follows: Meaning is discovered in the use of words; the use of words derives from belief-fixation; belief fixation is holistic and therefore the use of words is holistic; meaning holism is not something that can be explained through the subjective mind/computer comparison .

"What this argument does suggest (if the analogy upon which it is based indeed holds) is that, just as no formal system of mathematics can define what it is to be a mathematical proof, and no formal system of inductive logic can define what it is to be `confirmed', so no program for interpreting utterances in a natural language can define what it is for utterances to be synonymous or even coreferential. A complete computational characterization of `proof', `confirmation', `synonymy', and so on, will always be an impossibility."