Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Belgrade
Year XXVII
YU ISSN 0353-3891
UDK–1
Editor
Slobodan Perović (University of Belgrade)
Editorial Board
Miloš Arsenijević (University of Belgrade)
Jovan Babić (University of Belgrade)
Leon Kojen (University of Belgrade)
Živan Lazović (University of Belgrade)
Timothy Williamson (University of Oxford)
Advisory Board
Berit Brogaard (University of Miami)
Paul Boghossian (NY University)
Bob Hale (University of Sheffield)
Aleksandar Jokić (Portland State University)
Jan Narveson (University of Waterloo)
Georg Meggle (University of Leipzig)
J. Angelo Corlett (San Diego State University)
Howard Robinson (Central European University)
David Charles (University of Oxford)
Managing Editor
Željko Mančić (University of Belgrade)
1 This paper derives from a talk given at the Faculty of Philosophy of Belgrade University
in September 2014. I thank Professor Miroslava Trajkovski for the suggestion that I might
depart from my usual practice and give a talk on an historical theme, based in part on my
own experience. Thanks to the audience for constructive discussion, and to Peter Vallentyne
for spotting some bad typos. Additional thanks go to Professor Slobodan Perović for inviting
me to write up the paper for publication in this journal. He also pointed out the thematic
connection with Peter Strawson’s 1977 lecture at Belgrade University on the nature of analytic
philosophy, subsequently translated into Serbo-Croat (as it then was) and published in
Theoria (Strawson 1977). On that visit to Yugoslavia, Strawson lectured in Belgrade, Zagreb,
and Sarajevo. He later commented: ‘I registered a certain difference in atmosphere in the
three places. At least in academic circles the intellectual style seemed relatively untrammelled
in Belgrade and Zagreb, though the political tone was different. In Sarajevo, where I was
only allowed to give one of my two scheduled lectures and had minimal contact with fellow
academics, one perhaps time-serving young man in my audience suggested that my lecture
revealed an essentially bourgeois outlook. I replied “But I am bourgeois–an elitist liberal
bourgeois”. My interpreter commented, sotto voce, “They envy you”’ (Strawson 1998, p. 14).
The contrast between Strawson’s account of analytic philosophy and the present one, almost
forty years later, may be instructive.
8 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
I
The central, most influential figure in the development of analytic
metaphysics over the final quarter of the twentieth century, and the contemporary
philosopher most cited within recent analytic philosophy, is undoubtedly David
Lewis, also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational
power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and
beard from another era (by contrast with ‘the ghost in the machine’, Gilbert
Ryle’s summary description of the immaterial Cartesian ego in the clockwork
Cartesian body). The prize specimen of Lewis’s speculative metaphysics is in turn
his notorious doctrine of modal realism, according to which there are infinitely
many possible worlds, mutually disconnected spatiotemporal systems each as
real and concrete as our own actual world (Lewis 1986). For Lewis, strictly and
literally there are talking donkeys, because there could have been talking donkeys
(as we may all agree), so some possible world contains talking donkeys, which
are just as real, alive, and made of flesh and blood as any donkey you have ever
seen. Of course, those other worlds are not open to our observation; there are
no trans-world telescopes. Lewis postulates them because they follow from his
modal realism, which he regards as the best theory of possibility, necessity, and
related phenomena, in respect of simplicity, strength, elegance, and explanatory
power: to use C.S. Peirce’s term broadly, Lewis’s argument for modal realism is
abductive. In a way, Lewis takes non-actual possible worlds even more seriously
than did Leibniz, for whom they are merely unrealized ideas in the mind of God.
Leibniz’s God realized only the best of all possible worlds, whereas all of Lewis’s
possible worlds are equally realized. We can take Lewis’s modal realism as a case
study for the resurgence of speculative metaphysics in contemporary analytic
philosophy.
Some philosophers treat any appeal to possible worlds at all as a metaphysical
extravagance. But that is a mistake, for some theories treat possible worlds as
merely abstract objects or representations, harmlessly built from this-worldly
materials. Indeed, Rudolf Carnap, the logical positivist anti-metaphysician par
excellence, explicitly compared to Leibniz’s possible worlds his state-descriptions,
maximal consistent classes of sentences used in his semantics for languages with
Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 9
However, neither of them seems to have felt such a tension. In my view, there is
in fact such a tension, or inconsistency, but the argument for it must be made
with some delicacy and was not generally recognized at the time (Williamson
2013, pp. xii, 17 and 2014, pp. 744–6). Perhaps Quine simply gave modal realism
the same ‘incredulous stare’ that so many other analytic metaphysicians have
given it (Lewis 1986: 133–5). Moreover, Quine encountered modal realism at
a stage of his career when he was not disposed to accept radical revisions of his
views from outside; publicly retracting his well-entrenched signature scepticism
about quantified modal logic would have been a bitter pill to swallow. He showed
a similar lack of interest even in the purely technical development of the model
theory of modal logic, and in particular of quantified modal logic, by Kripke and
others, which is a piece of regular mathematics, no more vulnerable to Quine’s
concerns about intelligibility than any other piece of mathematics.
The example of Quine is a salutary reminder that the analytic tradition, as
normally understood, has never been a metaphysics-free zone. Before Quine,
Bertrand Russell was a major figure in the analytic tradition blatantly engaged
in metaphysical theorizing. Indeed, F.H. Bradley may well be right that critiques
of metaphysics themselves depend on contentious metaphysical assumptions
(Bradley 1893, pp. 1–2). Nevertheless, the role and status of metaphysics have
changed in significant ways over the history of the analytic tradition, and our
concern is with those ways.
Lewis’s case for his modal realism itself evolved over time. In the original
1968 paper, the emphasis is on the relation between modal and non-modal
languages, and the clarity to be achieved in modal logic by translating the
modal language into the non-modal language of Lewis’s counterpart theory
(the precursor of his modal realism). His postulates for counterpart theory
are used to validate elementary principles of modal logic, but they also clarify
the metaphysical picture. For instance, the postulate that nothing is in two
worlds has the advantage, according to Lewis, that it answers the question of
the identity of individuals across possible worlds at a stroke, with a uniform
negative. That is his answer to Quine’s complaints about the obscurity of trans-
world individuation (he cites Quine 1960, p. 245). By the time he wrote what
became the canonical case for modal realism, his book On the Plurality of Worlds
(Lewis 1986), based largely on his 1984 John Locke lectures at Oxford, Lewis’s
perspective had changed. He talks much less about linguistic matters, and
much more about the abductive advantages of modal realism as a theoretical
framework for explaining a variety of phenomena, many of them non-
linguistic. Faced with some objections to specific translation schemes between
the language of quantified modal logic (in effect, a formalization of ordinary
modal language) and the language of counterpart theory, he tells us not to worry
about the details, but instead to abandon the language of quantified modal logic
and do our metaphysical theorizing directly in the more perspicuous language
of counterpart theory (Lewis 1986, pp. 12–13). Clearly, from 1968 to 1986 the
balance of power in Lewis’s work swung towards metaphysics and away from the
philosophy of language.
12 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
essentialist metaphysics, but its role was negative, in driving off arguments
against essentialism, not positive, in driving forward arguments for essentialism.
There is a more general moral here about the famous ‘linguistic turn’, a
phrase which has looked less and less appropriate as a description of mainstream
analytic philosophy over recent decades. Nevertheless, although analytic
philosophers are ceasing to regard their central questions as linguistic or even
conceptual in any sense that would distinguish them from questions asked in
other disciplines, the traces of the linguistic turn are not simply being erased. For
it has left a rich legacy of methodological sophistication. In testing the soundness
of arguments about non-linguistic matters, analytic philosophers regularly draw
on work in both semantics and pragmatics (Williamson 2007, pp. 46–7). Kripke’s
work on quantified modal logic is a good example with respect to semantics.
With respect to pragmatics, the prime exhibit is the work of Strawson’s
teacher, Paul Grice, on conversational implicature (1961, 1975). If you comment
after my lecture ‘Williamson was sober this afternoon’, you imply that I am
often drunk in the afternoon, even though that is not a precondition for the
truth of what you said: it is even true if I am a scrupulous teetotaller. Grice
developed a powerful theoretical apparatus for analysing such effects. Although
this work emerged from within the Oxford of ordinary language philosophy,
it made an important contribution to undermining the methodology of such
philosophy. For ordinary language philosophy involved a focus on ‘what we
would say’ in various conversational contexts. By analysing the diversity of
reasons for which an utterance might be conversationally inappropriate, Grice
demonstrated the limitations to what can be concluded from such data. But
his theory of conversation was not just a factor in the implosion of ordinary
language philosophy; it has a far more lasting and positive value. It is massively
cited by linguists, because it is the starting-point for much contemporary work
in pragmatics. But it also continues to play a vital negative role in contemporary
analytic philosophy.
Analytic epistemology provides a good case study of the philosophical
application of Gricean pragmatics outside the philosophy of language. Analytic
epistemologists today typically regard the object of their study as knowing (or
justified believing) itself, as opposed to the corresponding words or concepts.
In reflecting on knowledge or justified belief, they work through example after
example of epistemologically suggestive situations, often of quite everyday
sorts. In determining how to describe such situations, they frequently have to
ask themselves whether a proposed description is false or, by contrast, true but
conversationally misleading because it has a false conversational implicature.
They use Grice’s theory of conversation to filter out contaminated data. They
also have to engage with semantics as well as pragmatics, since some of the
leading contender theories are contextualist, in the sense that they postulate
shifts in the reference of epistemic terms according to the context in which
they are used. Despite all that, the epistemologists’ underlying object of study
is knowing itself, not the verb ‘to know’ or the concept of knowing. They sound
like ordinary language philosophers, and in a loose enough sense they are
Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 17
II
I arrived as an undergraduate at Oxford in 1973, to study Mathematics
and Philosophy. Logic played a central role in the course, to my lasting benefit;
its centrality is relevant to the point of view from which I observed the scene. I
received my undergraduate degree in 1976 and began to study for a doctorate.
Originally I hoped to formalize Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason, but I soon
switched to Karl Popper’s idea of verisimilitude, on which science can progress
through a succession of theories that get closer and closer to the truth without ever
quite reaching it. I left Oxford in 1980, to start my first proper job, as a lecturer in
philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, and received my doctorate in 1981.
In 1973, the two senior professors of theoretical philosophy at Oxford were
A. J. (Freddie) Ayer, Wykeham Professor of Logic from 1959 to 1978, and P. F.
(Peter) Strawson, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics from 1968 to 1987. Austin
had died in 1960 and Prior in 1969, both prematurely; Grice had left for Berkeley
in 1967. One could schematically associate Ayer and Strawson with the two main
strands of mid-century analytic philosophy: logical positivism and ordinary
language philosophy respectively. Ayer had studied with the Vienna Circle
and his first book, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) contained much logical
positivist doctrine, including a critique of metaphysics based on the verification
18 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
principle, although he traced his genealogy further back: ‘The views which are
put forward in this treatise derive from the doctrines of Bertrand Russell and
Wittgenstein, which are themselves the logical outcome of the empiricism of
Berkeley and David Hume’ (1936, p. 31). The book had been notorious for its
advocacy of expressivism about morality and religion. Its cheeky, provocative
style is conveyed by the title of the last chapter, ‘Solutions of outstanding
philosophical problems’. Whereas Ayer was a follower of Russell, Strawson’s most
famous article (1950) was a critique of Russell’s prize contribution to philosophy,
his theory of descriptions, and Strawson’s first book argued more generally that
such applications of modern logic did no justice to the subtleties of ordinary
language (1952). In live discussion, Ayer used rapid fire, Strawson elegant
rapier play. Ayer was better known to the general public, as a radio personality;
Strawson was more highly rated by professional philosophers, as more original.
Strawson had been a candidate for the Wykeham Chair of Logic; when Ayer was
elected, through the votes of the non-philosophers on the committee, Austin and
Ryle resigned in protest. Asked that evening by a colleague whether he felt very
disappointed not to have been elected, Strawson replied ‘Not disappointed, just
unappointed’.
By 1973, it was no longer strictly appropriate to classify Ayer as a logical
positivist, or Strawson as an ordinary language philosopher. It was closer to the
mark to describe Ayer as a Humean, and Strawson as a Kantian: the contrast
between them was no less marked for that. Strawson’s development into a
systematic metaphysician has already been noted. Ayer had retreated from
his early radicalism, including the verificationist critique of metaphysics. He
commented that the trouble with Language, Truth and Logic was that all its main
doctrines were false. In 1976, on the fortieth anniversary of its first publication, he
gave a series of lectures about what remained of his original view. In the book, he
had quoted as an example of an unverifiable pseudo-proposition of metaphysics
‘the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress’, which
he describes as ‘A remark taken at random from Appearance and Reality, by F. H.
Bradley’ (1936, p. 36). In his lecture, he admitted that, far from having taken the
remark at random, he had searched through Appearance and Reality for hours
to find something suitably nonsensical-sounding. It is a salutary reminder of the
intelligibility by ordinary standards of much metaphysical discourse –especially
when not torn out of context in the way he presented the passage from Bradley.
To younger philosophers in 1973, Ayer appeared quite old-fashioned
philosophically. So too, though to a lesser extent, did Strawson. The underlying
reason was in large part their relation to modern formal logic in philosophy.
Officially, Ayer was for it and Strawson against it, but neither of them knew much
about it. They had received their philosophical education at a time when such
logic did not loom large in Oxford. Philosophers of that generation sometimes
referred to formal logic as ‘sums’, the primary school word for elementary
arithmetic. The effect of Ayer and Strawson’s lack of facility with modern formal
logic was that they were poorly placed to deal with the new wave of philosophy
of language sweeping across the Atlantic, led by Kripke and Lewis (who was at
Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 19
status of semantics. Indeed, it was natural to expect a tight relation between the
semantic and syntactic structure of an expression, at least at the level of deep
structure or logical form. For it was a fundamental tenet of new wave philosophy
of language, coming through Carnap from Gottlob Frege, that the semantics
must be compositional, in the sense that the meaning of a complex expression is
determined by the meanings of its constituents; how else to explain our ability
to understand sentences we have never previously encountered, if made up of
familiar words in familiar types of combination? The initial hypothesis must
surely be that the requisite semantic articulation of sentences into their semantic
constituents matches their syntactic articulation into syntactic constituents at
some deep enough level. The compositionality constraint exerted a powerful
force in the direction of systematicity. In practice, the only semantic theories to
exhibit (rather than merely claim) such a compositional structure were those for
formally specified languages. Without such a formal semantics, a philosophy of
language looked badly undeveloped to new wavers. It was partly for this reason
that Austin was barely mentioned in Oxford philosophy of language by 1973,
since he had no formal semantics to offer. The same went for his protégé and in
some respects intellectual heir John Searle, whose major work Speech Acts looked
out of date from an Oxford perspective almost as soon as it was published in
1969. Although Austin and Searle continued to exert a significant influence, it
was mainly outside the new wave.
New wave semantics came in two main varieties, though methodologically
the differences between them were minor compared to their shared differences
from their predecessors. One variety was possible worlds semantics, which
went back to Carnap and by 1973 was associated with philosophers of language
such as Kripke, Lewis, Kaplan, Stalnaker, and Montague. In ‘English as a formal
language’ (1970), ‘The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English’
(1973), and other papers, Montague showed how it could provide a rigorously
working compositional semantics for large fragments of a natural language. His
work had a major influence on Barbara Hall Partee and has been seminal for a
major tradition of intensional semantics as a branch of linguistics. The other main
variety of new wave semantics was extensional, under the influence of Quine.
Chastened by his scepticism about meanings, it approached the semantic realm
less directly, through theorizing explicitly about reference and truth rather than
meaning itself. Nevertheless, its emphasis on the constraint of compositionality
was just as strong. Formally, it took inspiration from Tarski’s theory of truth. Its
main proponent was Donald Davidson (1967a). It too had a significant impact
on linguistics, most notably through Davidson’s semantics for verbs and adverbs
in natural language, which postulated tacit quantifiers over events (Davidson
1967b). A leading Davidsonian linguist was James Higginbotham.
I first encountered new wave philosophy of language in my first term as an
undergraduate, when my tutor encouraged me to attend the John Locke lectures,
Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 21
to be given by the rising young star of American philosophy, Saul Kripke. I was
hugely impressed by his clarity, informal rigour, pointed examples, common
sense, and humour. The lectures were mostly non-technical, but one both sensed
and independently knew of his easy technical mastery of the subject. Although
I did not think of it this way at the time, Kripke combined and reconciled the
virtues of ideal language philosophy with those of ordinary language philosophy.
At that stage, of course, I knew very little of the background in the philosophy
of language to what he was saying, and was in no position to follow everything
that went on in the lectures and the discussion that followed them. Nevertheless,
Kripke became the nearest I had to a model of how to do philosophy.
Although Kripke’s work was widely discussed in Oxford at that time,
especially by younger philosophers, the dominant variety in town of new wave
semantics was extensional rather than intensional. Davidson had given the John
Locke lectures in 1970. The two most admired young theoretical philosophers in
Oxford, Gareth Evans and John McDowell, somehow combined Davidson with
Frege as the packed audiences at their joint classes looked on. It was the moment
of the ‘Davidsonic boom’ – although people tended to utter the Tarskian mantra
‘The sentence „Snow is white” is true in English if and only if snow is white’ in
a rather slow and quiet voice. If you wanted to write on the philosophy of X,
whatever X was, then you were supposed to start by writing a truth theory for a
language for talking about X. I found the atmosphere of reverence for Davidson
unhealthy, not to say sickening. It was fine for him to choose a speculative and
controversial extensionalist starting point for his programme for the philosophy
of language, and to take it as far as he could from there, but the project cried
out to be undertaken in a scientific spirit, as a test of its assumptions. Instead,
they were treated – especially by those lower in the hierarchy – as dogmas of
mysterious but compelling power, an attitude encouraged by Davidson’s elliptical
and slightly evasive style. It was recognized that Davidson’s programme had to
meet the challenge of providing a compositional semantics for various apparently
non-extensional constructions in natural language, for ascribing beliefs and
desires or possibility and necessity, for example, but the discussion of alternative
proposals muffled the issues with a lack of openness and clarity about the rules
of the game. Philosophers, some with only a rather tenuous grasp of technical
matters, would invoke obscurely motivated technical constraints – a ban on
substitutional quantification, say, or a requirement of finite axiomatizability
– to exclude rival hypotheses. Kripke’s critique of Davidsonians’ objections to
substitutional quantification (1976) has been condemned as cruel, but to me it
came as a breath of fresh air; I can attest to the presence at the time of the sort
of atmosphere about which he complained.2 By contrast, intensional semantics
seemed to be conducted in a more open, scientific spirit, though Davidsonians
objected, darkly, to its possible worlds as creatures of darkness.
2 My first article to be accepted for publication, though not my first to be published, protested
against the Davidsonian dogma that theories of truth qua theories of meaning had to be
finitely axiomatizable (Williamson 1984).
22 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
for logicians to extract and perhaps answer the purely technical questions raised.
Moreover, the generalization of the semantics to non-mathematical language
still remained at a tentative, programmatic stage, not conducive to applications
in linguistics. A more general problem for Dummett was that by 1991 the
philosophical zeitgeist was even less receptive to anything like Dummett’s
programme than it had been earlier. He did not engage with the new paradigms
of metaphysics, such as the work of David Lewis. There was no obvious way to
interpret the new metaphysical theories as picturesque guises for views in the
theory of meaning, nor did the new generation of metaphysicians wish to do
so. Metaphysics itself had grown in self-confidence and felt no need to present
itself as anything else. Incidentally, despite its title, my own book Modal Logic as
Metaphysics (2013) is very far from a return to Dummett’s understanding of the
relationship between logic and metaphysics. As a first approximation, ‘logic’ in
Dummett’s title means something like ‘philosophical reflection on the meaning
of the logical constants’, while in mine it means ‘generalizing about the world in
terms just of the logical constants’. For Dummett, logic is metalinguistic, for me
it is not.
By the 1990s, few readers felt in danger of being compelled, against their
wills, by Dummett’s convoluted arguments, even when they understood them.
One of several reasons was that he discussed the mind in ways that still carried
behaviourist baggage from a philosophy of mind widely rejected by younger
generations since the collapse of behaviourist psychology and its replacement
by cognitive psychology in the 1960s. Such baggage is detectable in remarks
like this about knowledge of meaning: ‘we should [...] not be content with
saying what is known, without saying what it is to have that knowledge, that
is, how it is manifested by one who has it’ (Dummett 1991, pp. 104–5), where
the manifestation is in observable behaviour. In this respect, Dummett can be
compared to Quine, who was influenced by his Harvard colleague Skinner’s
behaviourism in psychology. One might think that behaviourism about language
had been outdated since the publication of Chomsky’s famously destructive
review of Skinner’s Linguistic Behavior (1959), but digestion can be a slow process.
I remember sophisticated young philosophers of language at Oxford in the late
1970s still talking of children learning their native language by being ‘drilled’
in it by adults. In Dummett’s case, his behaviourist tendencies came from his
reading of Wittgenstein rather than Skinner, and were correspondingly subtler
and less eliminativist than Quine’s. Nevertheless, the differences should not be
exaggerated. An anecdote from late in Dummett’s career: A group of younger
Oxford philosophers were discussing what he meant, in the great man’s silent
presence. Suggestion after suggestion was rejected because it would attribute
to him ‘crude old-fashioned behaviourism’. Eventually, someone turned to him
and asked ‘So what is your view, Michael?’. Dummett replied ‘I think it’s the one
you’ve been calling „crude old-fashioned behaviourism”‘.
For Dummett, as for other British philosophers of his generation,
Wittgenstein’s central contribution to the philosophy of mind was his Private
Language Argument. Its interpretation was disputed, but it was widely supposed
to show something very deep about the need for talk about mental states to
26 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
involve observable criteria (in some sense) for attributing them to others. The
putative insight had widespread repercussions for the philosophy of language,
concerning not just the semantics of mental state ascriptions but the nature
of the mental states in play for speakers and hearers of any speech act, and in
particular the nature of understanding. Dummett’s preference for assertibility-
conditions over truth-conditions in the theory of meaning was rooted in the
close linkage of assertibility-conditions to the observable use of the language,
which realist truth-conditions lacked, since users of the language might have no
idea whether they obtained. He combined this Wittgenstein-inspired focus on
use with a Frege-inspired insistence on the need for a systematic, compositional
theory of meaning, modelled on the semantics of a formal language. In thus
uniting elements of the two previous traditions of analytic philosophy, ordinary
language philosophy and ideal language philosophy, Dummett resembled the
younger new wave philosophers of language, although his selection of elements
to combine differed from theirs.
At this point something must be said more generally about the influence of
Wittgenstein on British philosophy in the period under discussion – as has often
been remarked, his influence in North America was never as great as in Europe,
one reason being the greater sway of naturalism or scientism in North America,
led by Quine and others. In the case of Dummett, since he was a student at
Oxford in 1950 when Wittgenstein spent some time there living in Elizabeth
Anscombe’s house, future historians might wonder whether there was face-to-
face influence. It is therefore worth recounting the story Dummett liked to tell
about his only meeting with Wittgenstein. Dummett was going for a tutorial at
Anscombe’s house. She kept the door unlocked. As was the practice, Dummett
went in, and sat down to await her summons. An elderly man in a dressing-gown
came downstairs and asked ‘Where’s the milk?’; Dummett replied ‘Don’t ask me’.
That was the extent of his conversation with Wittgenstein. What mattered instead
was Anscombe’s mediating role. She was probably the strongest transmitter of
Wittgenstein’s influence at Oxford until she left in 1970 to take up a chair at
Cambridge, although of course she was always a fiercely independent-minded
philosopher in her own right. Other Oxford ordinary language philosophers
such as Ryle, Austin, and Grice were not moulded by Wittgenstein, and the
number of card-carrying Wittgensteinians at Oxford was never very high.
Nevertheless, his influence was still pervasive when I was a student in the 1970s.
Gordon Baker and Peter Hacker, guardians of the flame, had a large following
amongst graduate students. They were later to have an ill-tempered dispute
about the value of Frege’s philosophy with Dummett: when their disparaging
book on Frege was published, Dummett organized an emergency series of
graduate classes to denounce it (Baker and Hacker 1984, Dummett 1984). It is
easy to list many Oxford philosophers of the time whose work showed significant
Wittgensteinian influence to varying extents, even though it would be crass to
classify them simply as Wittgensteinians: Dummett, Strawson, Philippa Foot, Iris
Murdoch, David Pears, Anthony Kenny, of a younger generation John McDowell
and Crispin Wright, and so on. What may be less obvious is how wary even
Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 27
those who barely mentioned him were of plainly saying that he was wrong about
something. One knew that doing so incurred the automatic charge of shallow
misinterpretation. It was best to step quietly around, and let sleeping dogs lie.
Wittgenstein’s main influence at that time was through his later work,
although few of those under the influence imitated his style of philosophizing in
that work. Most engaged in overt theorizing of a more or less systematic kind. The
citadel was the Private Language Argument, from which he exerted his power over
the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. The growing external
threat to that power from cognitive psychology was surprisingly little felt in 1970s
British philosophy. But there was also an internal threat. For how exactly was the
Private Language Argument supposed to work? Wittgenstein’s presentation was
notoriously Delphic. The simplest and clearest reconstructions had the argument
rest on a verificationist premise to the effect that one couldn’t be in a mental state
unless some independent check was possible on whether one was in that state.
But it was generally agreed that if the argument rested on a verificationist premise
then it was not compelling, because verificationism could not just be assumed
without argument. Defenders of the argument insisted that it worked without such
a premise, but could not satisfactorily explain how (a similarity with Davidson’s
transcendental argument mentioned above). Wittgenstein’s citadel was in danger
from within; his power was waning as a result. At this point an unlikely would-be
rescuer arrived: Saul Kripke. In lectures from 1976 onwards, and in his book on the
Private Language Argument and the associated considerations on rule-following
(Kripke 1982), he offered a conjectural interpretation of the argument that was
clearly non-verificationist and, if not compelling, at least powerful. The question
was: did it fit what Wittgenstein meant? The consensus amongst Wittgensteinians
was that it did not, and as a matter of historical scholarship they may well have
been right. But they seemed not to realize that in taking the negative attitude
they did, they were also rejecting their last chance to avoid marginalization from
the philosophical mainstream. The power of Wittgenstein’s name resumed its
decline. As for Kripke’s argument in its own right, it inadvertently gave the new
metaphysics an opportunity to spread its influence. For Kripke’s argument took
the form of a sceptical paradox, to which Kripke offered a rather unclear and
unattractive radically sceptical solution. By contrast, David Lewis offered a clearer
and more attractive non-sceptical solution, by means of a highly metaphysical
distinction between objectively natural and objectively non-natural properties
(Lewis 1983b). It was something like Lewis’s solution, not Kripke’s, that was
widely accepted.
Here are two snapshots of the decline in Wittgenstein’s standing. The first
is of a meeting in about 1994 of the ‘Tuesday group’, originally founded by
Ayer on his return to Oxford in 1959 as a counterweight to Austin’s Saturday
morning meetings. Susan Hurley read a carefully reasoned paper against the
Private Language Argument to an audience that included many leading Oxford
philosophers. The audience divided by age. Roughly, those over fifty did not take
the possibility seriously that Wittgenstein’s argument was fundamentally flawed,
although they also did not explain how it worked or what it showed; those under
28 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
language from scratch, but rather to say explicitly what its expressions mean in
a systematic, compositional way, to those who may already understand them
implicitly. Those in the intensionalist strand of new wave philosophy of language
had to resort to homophonic lexical semantics too. The Davidsonians realized
that, in particular, they could just as well give a homophonic semantics for moral
language too (Wiggins 1976). For instance, ‘evil’ in English applies to all and
only evil things. Nothing in their philosophy of language made it problematic
to give such an ostensibly out-and-out realist treatment of moral language. Nor
did it require any further semantic analysis of moral terms; they could be treated
as unanalysable. Thus Davidsonian philosophy of language found itself in the
unaccustomed role of providing a protective environment for Aristotelian moral
realism. By contrast, Dummett put much heavier explanatory demands on the
theory of meaning, perhaps too heavy to be satisfiable.
From the late 1970s onwards, Dummett also found himself fighting a
more global trend in analytic philosophy: a move away from the philosophy
of language towards the philosophy of mind. On his picture of the history of
philosophy, Descartes had made epistemology first philosophy, the engine for the
rest of philosophy, and then Frege had replaced epistemology by the philosophy
of language as first philosophy. Analytic philosophy was philosophy downstream
from that linguistic turn. But many analytic or ex-analytic philosophers were
starting, heretically, to treat the philosophy of mind as more fundamental than
the philosophy of language. Cognitive psychology made a far more interesting
and attractive conversation partner for philosophy than behaviourist psychology
had done, and had a natural interface directly with the philosophy of mind, for
instance in the theory of perception. Computer models of the internal workings of
the mind were also increasingly influential. Once again, many of the innovations
came from North America. As behaviourism lost its authority, Thomas Nagel
(1974) led the way in talking directly about conscious experience. Although
Daniel Dennett (1981) still showed some influence from his Oxford supervisor
Ryle, he engaged with psychology through the philosophy of mind, not the
philosophy of language. Jerry Fodor (1975) postulated a language of thought,
on the model of a computer’s machine code, but it was to be studied by the
methods of psychology and computer science, not those of linguistics. Moreover,
it was not a public language, whereas Dummett envisaged first philosophy as the
philosophy of public language, in line with the Private Language Argument.
In Oxford, the move into the philosophy of mind took a very specific
form, which Dummett had unintentionally facilitated. For him, much of Frege’s
achievement in the philosophy of language depended on his distinction between
sense and reference. Sense is individuated cognitively: two senses may present the
same reference in ways which count as different because they fail to render the
sameness of reference transparent to the thinker. The cognitive nature of sense
promised to make the connection Dummett wanted between the semantics of a
language and speakers’ use of that language. Thus ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’
differ in sense and use but not in reference. Dummett followed Frege in
making sense a level of linguistic meaning distinct from the level of reference.
Initially, this gave Fregean semantics a large head start over one-level referential
30 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
Since the 1980s, the philosophy of mind worldwide has continued to enjoy
a far more fruitful relationship with experimental philosophy than it did in
the heyday of behaviourism. However, it did not become first philosophy in
the way it had been expected to do. Nor did the philosophy of thought, which
anyway never solidified as a recognized branch of the subject. For instance,
developments in metaphysics have typically not been driven by anything in
the philosophy of mind. After all, with regained confidence in metaphysics, its
contemporary practitioners tend to see themselves as investigating the most
general and fundamental nature of a world in which human minds play only a
very minor role. Why should the philosophy of mind or the study of concepts
drive metaphysics any more than it drives physics? In principle, even if it cannot
contribute towards constructive metaphysical theory-building, it might help
towards understanding the folk metaphysical beliefs that may obstruct our
acceptance of the correct revisionary metaphysics. In practice, the philosophy
of mind and the study of concepts have had little impact on recent mainstream
metaphysics even in that modest negative way.
For the past several decades, no branch of philosophy has played the fully-
fledged role of first philosophy within analytic philosophy. To some extent,
that reflects the increasing specialization of academic research in general.
But it also concerns a change more specific to analytic philosophy (in a sense
broader than Dummett’s), in what philosophers take their subject matter to be.
As already noted, an increasingly prevalent, broadly realist attitude is that when
you are doing the philosophy of X, you are primarily interested in X itself, in
its most general and fundamental aspects, and only secondarily in the word
‘X’, or our concept of X, or our beliefs about X, or our knowledge of X. You
are not surreptitiously doing the philosophy of language or thought or mind or
knowledge. This reconception of the subject gives no branch of philosophy a
head start over the others.
However, the situation is more complicated than those simple formulations
suggest. For they might lead one to expect the philosophy of language to be
just one more branch of philosophy alongside all the others, the philosophy of
a phenomenon specific to humans and perhaps some other species scattered
here and there over the universe. It looked like that to some in the 1980s, and
taken in isolation it may still sometimes look like that. But, as already suggested,
the philosophy of language also plays a more general role throughout analytic
philosophy, in the evaluation of arguments. Of course, we do not need the
philosophy of language to determine whether an argument is deductively
valid in simple cases. But on almost any view of philosophy, it often involves
arguments with a subtle illusion of validity, and other arguments that are really
valid but need to be checked for such subtle illusions. The illusion may come
from confusions between entailments and presuppositions or conversational or
conventional implicatures, or from concealed shifts in context, or from lexical
or syntactic ambiguities, or from other linguistic complexities. Any discipline
that uses subtle, complex would-be deductive arguments in natural language
about abstract issues is liable to such illusions, and philosophy characteristically
uses arguments of that kind. That is of course not to say that it uses nothing
32 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
a quantified modal logic is the structural core of any properly developed theory
of modal metaphysics. Although not all of modal metaphysics is usefully treated
as logic, a vital part of it is. Logic, far from displacing metaphysics as the logical
positivists hoped, is at its centre.
The history of philosophy makes a mockery of any limited vision of what
philosophy is. It has not followed the path laid out for it by the logical positivists,
nor that laid out by the ordinary language philosophy. Nor has i perhaps
with a few limited exceptions t become a branch of psychology, or of physics.
Nevertheless, under all the surface turbulence, it somehow manages to extract
the residue it needs from each changing fashion. Who knows where the cunning
of reason will take it next?
III
History is often said to be written by the winners. In the case of analytic
philosophy, however, there is a danger that history will be written predominantly
by the losers. One reason is that analytic philosophy is a somewhat anti-
historical tradition, especially where it most resembles a science, in aspiration
or achievement. For there it tends to be oriented towards the future rather
than the past, in the manner of a science – hardly surprising when progress is
expected. Those who do not like history cannot complain when their history is
written by people who are not like them. A second reason is that recent analytic
philosophy seems to subvert the global narratives it might otherwise be tempting
to tell about the history of the subject – most notably, in the resurgence of realist
metaphysics, often unashamedly concerned with things in themselves. For those
sympathetic to Kant or Wittgenstein or Dewey, it must be tempting to see much
recent analytic philosophy as an insignificant anomaly, a passing throwback, in
the long march of philosophy.
A case in point is Richard Rorty, who was admirably willing to step back,
identify bold patterns in the then-recent history of analytic philosophy, and list
his heroes – Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein, Dewey, Heidegger, Sellars, Brandom, ...;
no wonder his racy, deliberately provocative stories have been so widely read. It
is striking that the very large number of names of contemporary philosophers
– villains as well as heroes – in the index to Philosophy and the Mirror of
Nature (Rorty 1979) does not contain that of David Lewis, who had already
published two highly much-discussed books and many articles, and been Rorty’s
colleague at Princeton since 1970. Rorty’s radar had missed a serious threat, the
central figure in analytic philosophy for the coming decades. Rorty was out of
sympathy with most new wave philosophy of language, and the metaphysics
that increasingly accompanied it, because its referential approach to semantics
came too close for his comfort to making language a mirror of the world. For
the future, he put his money instead on the inferential approach, particularly
in the neo-pragmatist form offered by Robert Brandom (1994), focussed on
the commitments and entitlements of speakers to make moves in the language
34 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
game. Brandom himself has his own grand narrative of the history of philosophy,
in which – tongue partly but not wholly in cheek – he presents himself as the
natural successor to Kant and Hegel (Brandom 2009). But his inferentialism
has remained at an even more programmatic stage than Dummett’s, lacking
an equivalent of Dummett’s connection with technical developments in proof
theory by Dag Prawitz and others. As a result, inferentialism has been far less
fruitful than referentialism for linguistics. In that crude sense, referentialism
beats inferentialism by pragmatic standards.
Of course, we cannot expect a history of recent philosophy to remain
neutral about the future. Even the driest chronicle of who published what when
has implicit standards of historical significance in selecting whom and what
to include. Good historical narratives discern patterns in their material more
explicitly and reflectively. This paper – which manifestly does not aspire to the
depth or rigour of serious history – has indicated a few of the messy complexities
which any history of recent analytic philosophy must try to order. Nevertheless,
it does at least gesture towards some larger patterns to be made explicit and
reflected on. A chronicle is not enough.
The power of fashion in philosophy already ensures that its history will
exhibit some patterns, if only of the mob rushing here and there. Some of
those fashions look foolish in retrospect; most of them did at the time to
non-sympathizers. But fashion is powerful in all academic disciplines, even in
mathematics – for instance, concerning which branches of the subject or styles
of work carry most prestige. Nor is that merely an inevitable defect in any
collective human enterprise. Academic fashions arise because people trained in a
discipline have some respect for the judgment of others trained in the discipline
as to what is good or fruitful work, worth imitating or following up. When things
go well, that mechanism enables the community to concentrate its energies
quickly where progress is being and will be made, to avoid wasted effort, and to
raise collective standards. It is a way of learning from others. The word ‘fashion’
is most appropriate when the level of deference to majority opinion becomes
too high, stifling diversity and independence of mind, making it harder in the
long run for the community to back up out of a wrong turning, since it loses its
sense of the alternatives. But the rule of fashion is only an exaggerated form of
something no community can do without. Even the time and energy spent on
bad ideas and misconceived programmes has its value, since the effect of the
investment is that their limitations are properly explored and tested, so lessons
are properly learnt. The history of academic fashions is the history of how things
once looked to highly intelligent and knowledgeable people.
The changes in philosophy discussed in this paper occurred in a period whose
political, social, and cultural history is already being written. Its philosophical
history needs to be properly written too, by historians of philosophy with at least
enough sympathy for them to understand why what so many philosophers did
seemed a good idea at the time. There are encouraging signs that such histories
are just starting to be written. I look forward to reading them.
Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 35
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Timothy Williamson: How did we get here from there? Te transformation of analytic philosophy 37
Abstract: Existing instruments to measure the quality of deliberation are too static,
focusing too much on the analysis of the individual speech acts. We present an
instrument to identify Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM) lifting the
level of deliberation from a low to high or vice versa. To use this instrument, one
has to look at the group dynamics of the entire discussion. Empirical basis are
discussions among Colombian ex-combatants from both the extreme left and the
extreme right. We investigate to what extent personal stories have either a positive
or a negative impact on deliberative transformative moments. A corresponding
typology of personal stories is developed.
1 Jürg Steiner, André Bächtiger, Markus Spörndli, and Marco R. Steenbergen, Deliberative
Politics in Action. Analysing Parliamentary Discourse, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Jürg Steiner, The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy. Empirical Research and Normative
Implications, Cambridge University Press, 2012.
2 Analogous to what Joseph Schumpeter postulated for the economy; Joseph Schumpeter,
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, third edition, New York: Harper and Row, 1950.
40 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
3 For an overview of the place of the DQI in contemporary deliberative research see Simon
Beste, “Contemporary Trends of Deliberative Research,” Journal of Public Deliberation 9
(2013), issue 2.
4 The DQI is presented in the appendix of both books cited in footnote 1.
Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Simona Mameli: Te dynamics of deliberation 41
and the US, both for plenary sessions and committee meetings.5 Speech acts in
parliamentary debates have a high formality with the chair giving the floor to
one actor after another. Thus, parliamentary speech acts have usually a certain
length, which allows scholar to use the DQI to get at the dynamic aspects of
a debate. André Bächtiger et al. have done this in a fruitful way for a Swiss
parliamentary committee that discussed over eight sessions a language bill.6 They
found, for example, that at first many actors told personal stories and that this
storytelling greatly diminished over time. A further finding was that references
to the common good and rational justifications also decreased over time.
The research situation is very different when we investigate informal group
discussions of ordinary citizens. This was the case for our study of discussions
between ex-combatants of the extreme left and the extreme right in Colombia
and of Serbs and Bosnjaks in Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina.7 At the
beginning of the discussions, moderators indicated that the topic for discussion
was to find ways for peace and then let the discussion go wherever it went.
The consequence was an often quick interactive pattern with many shortcuts,
a pattern very different from formalized parliamentary debates. Sometimes, it
happened that a participant uttered only a single word. According to the DQI,
the discourse quality of such a speech act would be extremely low. From the
perspective of Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM), however, it would
all depend on the context in which such a word is uttered. Let us discuss an
example, where the utterance of a single word led the discussion to continue
at a high level of deliberation. The example stems from a group of Colombian
ex-combatants. Arturo, an ex-guerrilla, uttered the single word rehabilitation.
What was the context in which this word was uttered? Before Arturo made
this extremely short intervention, the discussion flowed at a high level of
deliberation. The group addressed the issue whether the constitution should be
amended allowing the death penalty for rapists. In a very interactive way, the
group discussed this issue, addressing also alternatives like castration and life
in prison. Arguments were justified, and participants showed respect for the
arguments of others. Immediately before Arturo uttered the word rehabilitation,
Bernardo, an ex-paramilitary, made the following statement:
Family is the nucleus of society. I see Colombia as a big family, and if I make
a mistake and my brother goes to my father and tells him to beat me up, then we
are not doing anything good. What we have to do is to provide the mechanisms
and the means for that person to be able to realize the bad things he is doing and
completely change his behaviour.
Bernard brings the alternative into the discussion that rapists should not
be punished but should be helped to change their behaviour. To support his
5 Steiner et al., Deliberative Politics in Action.
6 André Bächtiger, Shawn Rosenberg, Seraina Pedrini, Mirjam Ryser, and Marco R.
Steenbergen, “Discourse Quality Index 2: An Updated Measurement Instrument for
Deliberative Processes,” Paper Presented at the 5th ECPR General Conference, Potsdam,
September 10–12, 2009.
7 Steiner, The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy, pp. 15–21.
42 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
argument, he claims that in a family it does not help when the father beats up
a son, and he compares Colombia to a family. With this statement, Bernard
keeps up the flow of the discussion, staying on topic and moving the discussion
forward in adding another alternative, for which he gives a justification. Thus,
the discussion stays at a high level of deliberation. What is Arturo attempting
to accomplish when at this point he utters the word rehabilitation? Given the
context, our interpretation is that Arturo gives Bernard a helping hand in
telling the group that what Bernard suggests goes under the technical term
of rehabilitation. With this helping hand, Arturo does not disrupt the flow of
high deliberation. He clarifies for the group what Bernard suggests and, in this
way, helps the discussion to continue on a more solid basis of knowledge. The
discussion indeed continues to flow at a high level of deliberation. Coding the
one-word speech act of Arturo with the DQI would give the impression that
the level of deliberation had sharply dropped. According to our interpretation,
however, uttering the word rehabilitation did not at all disrupt the flow of high
deliberation but fitted well into its flow. With our approach, we look at how the
individual speech acts are linked with each other.
The challenge in our research is to identify situations, where the discussion
is transformed to a high level of deliberation or drops to a low level. How do
we distinguish between the two levels? We take a qualitative approach, which
has much to do with linguistics and social psychology. We look at what actors
may wish to accomplish when they utter words in a particular context, and then
we attempt to determine whether a transformative moment occurs. When a
discussion drags on at a low level of deliberation, we look for mechanisms by
which the discussion finds its way to a high level of deliberation. Thereby, it is
not only important what speakers intend to say but also how listeners interpret
what the speakers say. When, on the other hand, the discussion flows at a high
level of deliberation, we look for mechanisms by which this flow is disrupted, and
the discussion is transformed to a low level of deliberation. Given this research
agenda, we have for each speech act four coding categories:
1) The speech act stays at a high level of deliberation.
2) The speech act transforms the level of deliberation from high to low
3) The speech act stays at a low level of deliberation
4) The speech act transforms the level of deliberation from low to high
The coding situation is not fundamentally different as for the DQI. In both
cases, one makes a coding judgment for each speech act. For the DQI, one codes
each speech act per se, for example, to what extent foul language is used or how
well arguments are justified.8 For Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM),
we look at the entire context to determine which of the four coding categories
applies. For both research projects, one has to make judgments that have to some
extent a subjective nature. Therefore, it is not a question of quantitative versus
qualitative research; in both cases one has to make qualitative judgments. For the
DQI, one has much more coding data, since one codes several dimensions of the
8 Steiner et al, Deliberative Politics in Action. Steiner, The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy.
Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Simona Mameli: Te dynamics of deliberation 43
discourse quality. Given the wealth of coding data, the usual publishing practice
is that only the coding decisions are revealed but not their justification, or at
most with some sample examples. The focus tends to be on complex statistical
analyses showing the antecedents and consequences of variation in the DQI.
For the current project, we are not interested in statistical analyses. Our
research strategy is rather to give a full description of how we arrived at our coding
decisions. We tell in an in-depth way the story of each group discussion with
its ups and downs. The reader is invited to follow closely how we interpret the
dynamic that goes on in a discussion. Since our interpretations are fully revealed,
the reader has the basis to take a different view on what is going on in a group.
With this approach we are close to Ron Lubensky, who analysed the discussions
of the Australian Citizens’ Parliament (ACP).9 The title of his paper already
indicates in what direction he wants to go with his analysis: „Listening Carefully
to the Citizens’ Parliament: A Narrative Account.” He wishes „to open a window
to the story of the ACP’s participants.”10 Lubensky does not claim that he has „a
master story from which all interpretations of the ACP should follow, nor (is he)
claiming that the story line presented here is the only one.” His main point is „that
a reflective, storied approach to analysing the events, based on narrative methods
of discourse analysis, provides useful insight into the process and capacities of
participants.” This is pretty much what we have in mind in our current research.
In practical terms, we proceed in our coding in such a way that we try to put
ourselves in the context in which each actor actually speaks. This means that we
consider only the speech acts that are already uttered and not those that follow.
Times and again, we went back to what was said before, checking the tapes and
the transcripts making sure that we had a good feeling for the context in which
an actor intervened in this discussion. Only when we had made a coding decision
did we proceed to the next speech act. In this way, we try to follow the narrative
of the discussion quasi life, which means as it is experienced by the participants
themselves, who obviously do not know what will happen after they speak.
That one should not look at individual speech acts in isolation but in how
they relate with what was said before is also emphasized by conversation theory,
which is prominent among anthropologists. We became only recently aware
of this theory and find it comforting to get support for our approach from
outside the deliberative literature. In a review paper, Charles Goodwin and John
Heritage put the core of conversation theory in these terms: „conversational
participants will inevitably display some analysis of one another’s actions. Within
this framework of reciprocal conduct, action and interpretation are inextricably
intertwined ... in the real world of interaction sentences are never treated as
isolated, self-contained artefacts.”11 Conversational captures well what is also our
intention to analyse discussions as an interactive process.
9 Ron Lubensky, “Listening Carefully To The Citizens’ Parliament: A Narrative Account,” in
Carson L, Gastil J., Hartz-Karp J, Lubensky R., (eds.), The Australian Citizens’ Parliament
and the Future of Deliberative Democracy, University Park. PA: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2013.
10 This and the following quotes Lubensky, “Listening Carefully,” p. 66.
11 Charles Goodwin and John Heritage, “Conversation Analysis”, Annual Review of Anthropology,
Vol. 19 (1990), pp. 287–8.
44 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
13 Lyn Carson, “Investigation of (and Introspection on) Organizer Bias,” in Carson L, Gastil
J., Hartz-Karp J, Lubensky R., (eds.), The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of
Deliberative Democracy, University Park. PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013.
14 Thomas J. Scheff and Don D. Bushnell, “A Theory of Catharsis,” Journal of Research in
Personality 18 (1984), 238
15 Jacob L. Moreno, “Mental Catharsis and the Psychodrama,” Sociometry 3, 3 (1940), 209.
16 Jacob L. Moreno, “Mental Catharsis and the Psychodrama,” Sociometry 3, 3 (1940), 209.
17 Thomas J. Scheff and Don D. Bushnell, “A Theory of Catharsis,” Journal of Research in
Personality 18 (1984), 238.
18 John P. Lederach. The Little Book of Conflict Transformation. Good Books (2003). p.15
19 Johan Galtung. Conflict Transformation By Peaceful Means: A Trainer’s Manual. United
Nations (2000). p. 4
Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Simona Mameli: Te dynamics of deliberation 47
creation and a source of destruction, we decide to act in such a way that the
creative aspects take control. The task of transforming a conflict requires
„finding positive goals for all parties, imaginative ways of combining them, and
all of this without violence.”20
In education, Jack Mezirow understands transformative learning as „the
process of effecting change in a frame of reference.”21 Frames of reference, in
turn, are the structures of assumptions through which we understand our
experiences.”22 Finally, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization – UNESCO – uses the concept of social transformation to describe
a critical stance towards traditional notions of development. It „considers social
transformation research as a field of research that can lead to positive steps for
social and political action to protect local and national communities against
negative consequences of global change.”23
These references to the scholarly literature at large indicate that the concept
of transformation has a prominent place in many fields. Thereby, it is important
to note that transformation is not simply a synonym for change but denotes a
particular sort of change, namely an abrupt change in the sense of a catharsis. It
is such transformations that form the topic of our new research. To present such
research will be for another place. In this paper we only wished to introduce
Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM) as a new concept, of which we
hope that it will be fruitful to get at the dynamic aspects of deliberation.
Abstract: This paper attempts to show that an idea of truth and a normative
liberal democratic theory can go hand in hand. First, it is argued that truth has
something to do with politics. Second, three possible aspects of the relationship
between democratic government and truth are discussed. The discussion begins
with a presentation of arguments for the view that the process of establishing
scientific truth stricto sensu is not generally a matter of wide public or democratic
debate, and thus is not incompatible with a democratic order. The discussion then
moves on to consider practical social problems; it endswith the claim that unlike
in „pure” scientific inquiry, democratic procedure is directly relevant and perhaps
crucial to solving practical collective problems. The final part of the paper concerns
„the market of ideas” and the possibility of its failure. It is clear that market of ideas
is not sufficient for producing autonomous and critical citizens who have a „strong
desire not to be fooled” (Bernard Williams). Quite the contrary, the marketplace
of ideas may be exposed to agencies that deliberately distort and conceal the
truth. Governments are prone to commit such illegitimate actions because of the
very nature of their ways of working. This may be the most difficult problem for a
democratic institutional framework.
Keywords: truth, politics, democracy
Introduction
Perhaps we should begin our discussion with the alleged dangers of truth
for democracy. For example, many important political philosophers (Hannah
Arendt, Karl Popper, and John Rawls, to name but a few) worried about the
potential authoritarian and totalitarian implications of the concept of truth in
politics. On this view, truth has a coercive nature that is unfriendly to the spirit
of tolerance necessary for democratic political life that acknowledges value-
pluralism in a society. In a similar vein but much earlier, John Locke – in his
Letter Concerning Toleration – expressed the view that the function of law is not
1 Work on this paper was supported by the project “Dynamic Systems in Nature and Society:
Philosophical and Empirical Aspects” (No. 179041), financed by Ministry of Education,
Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.
50 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
to secure the truth of citizens’ opinions but to provide stable and longlasting
government where believers of various kinds can simultaneously practice their
religious commitments.
Suppose that for certain reasons we want to keep the term ‘truth’ in a
theoretical debate about the nature of the political. Offhand, it seems that politics
has something to do with truth. An argument can be developed in the following
way: assuming that life’s being worth living has something to do with the
conditions of the world we inhabit, which may be so because most of us want to
cultivate the world around us by cooperating with others in light of, say, visions
of the good life, it seems that we should be concerned with having adequate
information about the world, that is to say, we cannot avoid truth claims, or, at
least, some probabilistic estimates about the way the world is. In addition, we
should see to it that the structure of our collective endeavour to attain a good life
fits the demands of the task. In this sense we can say that a political structure is
bad or good, and that the outcome of the working of its institutions are successes
or failures. And this may a way to pull truth between Scylla and Charybdis of
the abovementioned liberal worries. Perhaps the answer is to rely on minimal,
commonsensical, and pragmatic conceptions of truth. Instead of using the term
‘truth’ in a „heavy realist” manner, we can start out with the idea of hypothetical
objectivity (or, with an „independent standard of correctness”)2 in order to
make sense of what we do in science and politics. Both scientific inquiry and
politics are understood as problem-solving activities; „standards of correctness”
in their various forms and character pertain to these activities. The question is
how democratic society and requests for truth understood in this „light” sense
interlock. That is to say, we then have to ask how truth comes into play into
politics, and what democratic politics needs to do such that truth comes into
politics in the right way.
When answering this question, there are several aspects of the problem that
need to be clarified. I’ll name them one by one as they come naturally, without
false hope of exhausting the list. Let us first begin by delineating the aspects of
the problem. Three aspects will be discussed here: 1) the relationship between
scientific inquiry and democratic society; 2) solving practical social problems;
and 3) the problem of creating autonomous citizens (the relationship between
the „marketplace of ideas” and democratic political culture).
problems such as global warming, putting a drug on the market, the choice of
tax-system, going to war, immigration, and then finishes, say, with deciding
on allowing euthanasia in hospitals, same-sex marriage, capital punishment,
and so on. On the one side of this imagined spectrum there are deep moral,
religious and political disagreements and a diversity of citizens’ opinions on how
to solve them, and, on the other, there are opinions and judgements that are
more about natural facts and other scientific claims.3 The imagined spectrum
can be extended by adding scientific inquiry that addresses issues with almost
no political bearing. For example, we can think of a scientist who works on the
discovery of subatomic particles or on structure of DNA who is motivated solely
by theoretical questions about the structure of matter, or, say, the beginning of
life. If this is so, we can define our spectrum along the line that begins from basic
or „pure” scientific inquiry, which has only epistemic significance, and which
continues with examples of applied science with both epistemic and practical
significance, and ends up with activity that addresses practical social problems
that have deep moral significance.
In light of all this, we can generate two claims: first, that the range and
variety of issues corresponds to the domain with which they are associated;
second, that the method of solving the issues, when done correctly, is closely knit
with the nature of the domain–i.e., it is hard to imagine a non-trivial, general
standard across the board.
There is one more point that needs to be made clear. Even if we suppose
that there is no unqualified and stateable truth across the board, taking the form
of a „substantial something” out there in the world that makes all our judgments
true or false, we have to concede that the status of the judgments about the
issues (good/bad judgements; correct/incorrect) depends on how far they are
from something we might hypothetically call „objectivity”. When we speak of
natural science, this term could refer to scientific facts and laws that are the
subject matter of the entire explanatory framework4 within a certain field; but it
can also refer to the normative claims that themselves yield practical objectivity.
These latter normative claims can be understood as putative „objective” political
truths. For example, if we reinterpret Rawls’ standards in A Theory of Justice in
this „truth-type talk”, we can say that whether a normative claim is correct is
matter of whether it is in accordance with principles acceptable to „reasonable”,
„free”, and „equal” citizens in the „original position”; thus we can say that it is
3 There are also disagreements that have not been mentioned, the nature of which are more a
matter of convention–for example, it seems that one would have to accept a majority verdict
on whether to drive on the left-hand side of the road without further pondering the deep
significance of this verdict. But, for example, the issue of euthanasia cannot be solved in
the same manner: even if there were a very reliable procedure as to how to make correct
decision on this issue, it would still make sense for somebody as a moral being to ponder the
significance of its results. I owe this last point to David Estlund; see his “Beyond Fairness and
Deliberation”, p.187 in Deliberative Democracy ed. James Bohman and William Rehg, MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusets 1997.
4 We can think of this as a settled paradigm of “normal science” in Kuhn’s sense of this idea,
given in his Scientific Revolutions.
52 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
probably true that some instances of the minimal conception of common good,
such as absence of war and famine, Pareto-efficient collective outcomes, the rule
of law, economic prosperity, etc., would be chosen by individuals in a Rawlsian-
type „original position”, and this procedure would perhaps be the right way to
attain them. In this sense the common good as described above would count as
objective value.5
Thus on the one side of the spectrum there are the truths of natural science,
and on the other side there are putative truths of moral or political principles; I
assume that truths along this spectrum could be correct answers to scientific and
political questions; I also assume that correct answers are independent from the
procedures we use to attain them. This „standard-independency” attitude does
not have to commit one to any sort of metatheoretical realism, whether scientific
or moral. It is not that facts out there in the world make our judgments true or
false; rather, practices themselves require certain proper standards on the basis
of which we can attain successful predictions or correct answers in a particular
domain. The proper function of these practices pertain to the nature of the field
itself. Some practices, such as natural science inquiry, require a more exclusive
group to be in charge, while some others, contrary to this, require a more inclusive
group. The same applies to the institutional setup within which the groups work
when they come to grips with an issue: when deciding on the acceptability of
euthanasia, for example, the institutional setup should allow a wide democratic
debate, whereas discussion, say, on the interpretation of experiments in physics
on elementary particles does not. The question is, how should democratic society
and the search for truth interlock along the abovementioned spectrum?
We shall see that, unlike in the case of one domain of scientific inquiry which
we may, following Philip Kitcher, call „pure science”,6 democratic procedure is
directly relevant and perhaps crucial to solving practical collective problems in
the right way as long as we as liberals believe that on average individuals are the
best judges about what is good for them (this is both a moral and an epistemic
assumption), and as long as we believe that the electorate as a whole – by using
both deliberative and agregative methods – has a privileged status in solving
collective practical problems.
An example can clarify this point: for epistemic reasons it should not be
left to the expert(s) to decide for a society whether euthanasia should be legally
allowed; on the other hand, suggestions as to how a bridge should be built,
ceteris paribus, should rely more on estimates undertaken by capable engineers
who could give figures offhand simply by relying on received knowledge from
technical science and its constraints. This of course does not mean that authorities
should not take into account anything else besides engineers’ estimates (for
example, the religious commitments of the population scattered around the
construction site should come to the fore at some point); nor does it mean that
the general public should not take into account experts’ opinions on the possible
5 I follow here Helen Landemore’s idea of political cognitivism and procedure-independent
standards of correctness. See her book Democratic Reason (Chapter 8, Political Cognitivism:
A Defense).
6 Philip Kitcher, Science, Truth and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, p. 87.
Milorad Stupar: Democracy and truth: a cluster of problems – an attempt to sort them out 53
effects of practicing euthanasia. The point is that experts should have the final
say on how to build a bridge, whereas a democratic deliberation, followed by
voting on referendum, could be necessary for eventually deciding the issue of
euthanasia. And it should be no surprise that things should be done this way.
The issue of euthanasia is morally heavily loaded and concerns every citizen in
a political community; it requires maximal inclusiveness of the population and
thus becomes a statutory or constitutional question.
Now, one might object to this that disagreements can occur even within
a group of professional experts. One might wish to push further and claim
that democratic deliberation, along with majority voting, is the best and most
appropriate procedure in these cases and thus democracy stays with us even
when dealing with „pure” science and experts working within its research
projects. A sceptic might even push further and say that evidence for scientific
claims is always insufficient, such that our decisions about what to believe are
always crucially affected by our moral, social, political, and religious values. We
can add to this problem a worry concerning the argument that science is never
merely the pursuit of truth pure and simple, but rather the pursuit of those truths
that scientists believe to be significant.7 One cannot isolate science from society,
as some of the „scientific faithful” would have it, rather dogmatically.
But the question is whether conflicts about evidence in science require
wide democratic public debate to be resolved. And the answer seems to be „no”,
because whether or not a wide electoral body finds them agreeable is not what
matters. For example, the question of whether an elusive subatomic particle is
detectable is not a moral issue, and thus it does not require public deliberation
on the part of the entire electoral body. In addition, one more point needs to be
added: from the assumption that ordinary citizens have equal right to exercise
their freedom of ethical, religious, and political choice, one cannot conclude
that everyone has an inherent ability to assess particular truth claims in science.
When satisfying the virtue of truthfulness or accuracy in scientific endeavours
(at least as far as „pure” science is concerned), it seems that moral, political, and
religious judgments should be as far as possible kept away from any evaluation
of evidence for conclusions.
matter: if the temperature and amount of gas remain unchanged within a closed
system, the pressure of a gas tends to decrease as the volume of a gas increases.
It also seems that our natural, common-sense epistemic attitude toward
truth, scientific inquiry, and the objective world supports some form of scientific
realism. Or, if we do not want to use the word ‘realism’, we can say that it in some
sense supports some „correspondence” of the scientific theories. For example,
when navigating, the fact that we end up so often where we want to go is best
explained by the simple truth that our maps do represent the organisation of
the land. Another examples abound: there are numerous successful scientific
predictions. For example, planes stay up, a space module gets to the moon,
e-mail goes through, etc. It is hard to conceptualize these successes unless we are
in some sense right about the objective world around us. Thus in some sense,
the „correspondence” aspect of scientific theories always stays with us even if we
reject naive realism. The question is, what is left for democratic constituency to
debate about science if we suppose that an exclusive professional group has the
right to decide about what counts as objective knowledge?
What may concern democracy regarding objective scientific knowledge is
transparency and the accessibility of accumulated knowledge when circumstances
require that the public should be acquainted with its results. As Philip Kitcher
puts it, when we say that scientific enquiry should be free, democracy may
require that investigators be honest in the presentation of their findings, that
conduct of experiments cannot override certain important moral values, etc.8
Let us turn now to some practical political problems.
as other forms of behaviour that contribute to the failure of the proper working
of the market-place of ideas – such as polarization, political silencing, etc. If one
enters a proper democratic market-place of ideas, one should suppose that the
public she addresses is capable of critical reflection. In other words, he or she is
associated with people who are, to use Bernard Williams’ expression, „ready not
to be fooled”, who do not believe everything they hear, and yet who may still retain
great suspicion as to whether there is anything like objective, let alone absolute,
truth in practical matters.18 In this sense one is creating herself as a democratic
individual, capable of sustaining and recreating the democratic environment.
Thus public space should be arranged in such a way that when entering it
one is at pains to convince the public into believing one’s ideas. One’s epistemic
attitude is such that one’s words and ideas are somewhat constrained so that they
can be justified to all. When believing something, one assumes responsibility
for responding to criticism, meeting challenges, and considering objections. In
this sense, when entering democratic public space one is committed to truth
implicitly. The justification of one’s beliefs to the public counts as a part of the
process of truth-acquisition. Obviously this environment requires conditions for
deliberation process, such as mutual exchange of arguments, reciprocity, respects
for interlocutors, etc.19 All this is the matter of political culture, the essential
part of which is institutional setup and content. This brings us to the necessary
institutional conditions for the proper working of the market-place of ideas,
which is probably the most delicate issue for a democratic order. Let us now
consider this problem.
One way to solve this problem is institutional, and is well known from
the work of Montesquieu – this is the idea of a division of political power.
Thus intelligence reports and security secrets that a democratic government
acquires should be shared, perhaps by some members of a legislative part of the
government, or even by opposition party members, or should be available through
parliamentary hearings, etc. Perhaps such institutional practices may reduce the
chance of misinformation, obscuring the truth, and so on. However, this is very
difficult problem for any democracy. What makes it somewhat easier to accept
these pessimistic conclusions is that, institutionally speaking, authoritarian
regimes are less likely to successfully cope with this problem. The problem
becomes even deeper when we think about the issue globally. For example, who
is to scrutinize the work of a government’s intelligence on an international level?
Perhaps this can be done through a set of internationally-recognized institutions,
or non-governmental organizations, or the free global press. The problem with
this is that superpowers, even with a democratic institutional setup, dodge such
issues and very often are not willing to comply to the standards of public reason
in an international context.
Ivan Mladenović Original Scientific Paper
University of Belgrade UDK 321.7:141.7
Abstract:1 Our goal in this article is to explore the relevance of the recent
debate on epistemology of disagreement for democratic theory and especially
for deliberative democracy. When talking about democratic decision making,
deliberative democrats typically stress the importance of consensus or at least
some kind of higher-level agreement. According to one prominent view in the
epistemology of disagreement debate, that might be called the view of conformists,
in the case of peer disagreement we should revise our own beliefs or degrees of
belief so that we end up in agreement with our epistemic peers. It is not surprising
that deliberative democrats welcomed this result. In this paper I shall argue that
deliberative democrats should not embrace too readily the view of conformists.
Keywords: deliberative democracy, epistemic peers, disagreement, the equal
weight view
1 Earlier version of this paper was presented at the Democracy and Truth conference organized
by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, October 5–6,
2013. I am grateful to participants of the conference for very helpful discussions. This paper
was realized as a part of the projects No. 43007 and No. 41004 financed by the Ministry of
Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.
62 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
likely than reaching of a consensus. Our paper will thus attempt to consider
whether it is rational for a participant to change one’s beliefs or degrees of belief
in circumstances of disagreement. Given that it is the central issue of the current
debate on epistemology of disagreement, we will pay special attention to this
debate. Our aim is to explore whether debate on epistemology of disagreement
can help solve difficulties in reaching consensus in the political arena, a problem
faced by contemporary theory of deliberative democracy.
Disagreement is a social fact. Democracy might not be uniquely the best way
to solve the problems of disagreement, but it certainly is normatively, amongst
the most appealing mechanisms. Let’s say that I prefer policy A over policy B,
and that two other persons Mark and Jane have exactly the opposite preference
orderings. We cast our votes and policy B wins. Of course, I still think that this is
not the right decision, that is to say I disagree with them over the outcome of the
decision making process. Still, I prefer to solve our disagreement over policies
A and B by casting votes over using violence or threats of violence. We may
take majority voting procedures to be legitimate even when we disagree with
their outcomes. Some people argued that there is something paradoxical about
this conclusion (Wollheim 1962). I cannot, on pain of incoherence, endorse the
procedure that produces the result that I disagree with.
Deliberative democrats think that if the democratic decision process includes
not only voting, but also public deliberation, then this problem might be solved.
They hope that talking prior to voting may influence some people to change
their views for the right reasons. After hearing reasons for or against different
proposals from other people we may reduce our disagreement over the correct
outcome of the decision making process. If Mark and Jane have good reasons to
support policy B, then I may be convinced by force of the better argument that I
should also vote for policy B. In an ideal case of unanimous agreement, we don’t
need a voting procedure at all, but many political philosophers remain skeptical
about the possibility of reaching consensus in the political arena (Bohman and
Richardson 2009). The most to which we can realistically aspire would be some
kind of meta-agreement (Dryzek and List 2003; Knight and Johnson 2011). Even
if we disagree over our first-order preferences, we may still reach an agreement
over the dimension of our disagreement. That is to say we may agree on what
the common dimension of our disagreement is, and structure our first-order
preferences accordingly. So, deliberative democrats hold that by means of public
deliberation we may arrive at correct or at least at rational social choices. The
democratic decision process aims toward consensus or at least some kind of
meta-level agreement.
It seems that democratic decision making procedures which include
talking prior to voting, have an epistemic advantage over the procedures that
simply aggregate votes or opinions. In order to explain this advantage, Goodin
highlighted the difference between mechanical information-pooling and
discursive information-pooling. Actually, he defines deliberative democracy
as „information pooling by means of talk” (Goodin 2008, 94). Consider the
following example that Goodin uses in order to motivate the difference between
Ivan Mladenović: Deliberative democracy and the epistemology of disagreement 63
of those one counts as one’s epistemic peers” (Elga 2007, 484), it seems that it is
possible after all to reach consensus in the circumstances of disagreement. Is it
reasonable then, for a deliberative democrat to rely on the equal weight view?
Here is why the answer is „no”. Elga makes further distinction between pure
and messy real-world cases of disagreement (Elga 2007, 492). The equal weight
view seems correct in the pure cases of peer disagreement, but in the messy real-
world cases it seems absurd because it would recommend suspending judgment
on almost every moral and political question. The problem is that in the pure
cases of peer disagreement, counting someone as an epistemic peer is „based
on reasoning that is independent of the disputed issue” (Elga 2007, 492). That,
however, is not the case in the messy real-world disagreements. Here, reasoning
about the disputed issue is interconnected with many other issues, and there
might be a lot of disagreements about these other issues, too. If we think that
someone got it wrong on many of these issues, then we will not think that they
will get it right on the disputed issue. The upshot is that in the messy real-world
cases we don’t treat each other as epistemic peers. The critical contrast is this:
Think of a smart and well-informed friend who has a basic political
framework diametrically opposed to your own. Imagine that the two of you are
both presented with an unfamiliar and tricky political claim. You haven’t thought
things through yet, and so have no idea what you will eventually decide about the
claim. Still–don’t you think that you are more likely than your friend to correctly
judge the claim, supposing that the two of you end up disagreeing? If so, then
however quick-witted, well-informed, intellectually honest, and thorough you
think your friend is, you do not count her as an epistemic peer with respect to
that claim. And if you do not count her as a peer, the equal weight view does
not require you give her conclusion the same weight as your own. Indeed, if you
think that your friend has been consistently enough mistaken about allied issues,
then the equal weight view requires you to become more confident in your initial
conclusion once you find out that she disagrees.
At the other extreme, think of a smart friend who has a basic political
framework extremely similar to your own. Again, imagine that both of you have
just been presented with an unfamiliar political claim. In this case, you may
well think that in case of disagreement, your friend is just as likely as you to be
correct. If so, and if you and your friend end up coming to opposite verdicts, then
the equal weight view requires you to think it just as likely that she is right as that
you are. But notice that friends like these–friends who agree with you on issues
closely linked to the one in question–will very often agree with you on the one in
question as well. (Elga 2007, 493–494)
The preceding discussion suggests that deliberative democrats should not
embrace too readily the equal weight view. Our central objection is that by
using the equal weight view as a part of the strategy for resolving the dilemma
of a deliberative democrat, one actually assumes what one claims to be proving.
Deliberative democrats think that the common political framework should be
forged through the process of public deliberation. The point here is that in order
to apply the equal weight view they have to presuppose the common political
framework. When this point is appreciated it becomes clear that a deliberative
68 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
democrat cannot rely on the equal weight view in order to resolve the dilemma.
Hence the argument based on the equal weight view does not go through.
In this article we have claimed that an important problem faced by
deliberative democratic theory is that public deliberation may lead to reaching
of a consensus, but also to a reasonable disagreement. A deliberative democrat
cannot claim that both are at the same time desirable goals of public deliberation.
We have called this problem the dilemma of a deliberative democrat. The gist of
our article was consideration whether contemporary debate on epistemology of
disagreement can help solve this problem. In that sense, we have particularly
considered the position called the equal weight view which states that in a
situation of a disagreement among epistemic peers, the only rational answer
is meeting halfway, which simultaneously leads to reaching of a consensus.
However, we have concluded that the equal weight view provides only limited
support to the theory of deliberative democracy and that the dilemma of a
deliberative democrat cannot be resolved on its premises.
References
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Dryzek John S. and Christian List (2003) „Social Choice Theory and Deliberative
Democracy: A Reconciliation,” British Journal of Political Science 33: 1–28.
Elga, Adam (2007) „Reflection and Disagreement,” Noûs 41: 478–502.
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Feldman, Richard (2007) „Reasonable Religious Disagreements,” in Antony L.
(ed.), Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 194–214.
Goodin, Robert E. (2008) Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice
After the Deliberative Turn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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T. S. and J. Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Volume 1,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 167–196.
Knight, Jack and James Johnson (2011) The Priority of Democracy: Political
Consequences of Pragmatism, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lackey, Jennifer (2010) „A Justificationist View of Disagreement’s Epistemic
Significance,” in Haddock A., Millar A., and D. Pritchard (eds.), Social
Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 298–325.
List, Christian, Luskin, Robert C., Fishkin, James S., and Iain McLean (2006)
„Deliberation, Single-Peakedness, and the Possibility of Meaningful
Ivan Mladenović: Deliberative democracy and the epistemology of disagreement 69
DEMOCRACY: IS IT BOTH
POSSIBLE AND DESIRABLE?
required, the Nays have more power than the Yeas. With less than a majority
required, we encounter contradictions – a proposal could both pass and fail at
the same time, leaving us with no result.
So Democracy is Majority Rule. And Majority Rule, at least in the form of rule
by whoever is elected, is certainly at least possible. (How practicable it would be to
have „direct” democracy, even with modern internet techniques, is an interesting
question, but certainly it is not practicable as yet in any sizable community; nor
do most of us think it would be a good idea even if we could do it.)
For that matter, literal majorities are rare in most contemporary democracies.
But if we relax the idea enough to allow election by plurality rather than actual
majority, and make the somewhat generous assumption that the non-voters in a
given election are willing to take whatever they get at the hands of the electorate
who do vote, then government by voting is more than „at least possible” – it is
actually in effect in an enormous number of countries today.
And the results, of course, provide ample evidence that democracy is both
practicably possible and compatible with bad government – very bad indeed.
Well, it is surely worth asking why democracy is supposed to be so good,
anyway?
(1) some enthusiasts seem to think that democracy is an intrinsic good. This
can be analyzed into two variants:
(1a) those who think that Equality is intrinsically good, and Democracy is
one case of that; and
(1b) those who think that, whatever there may be said about Equality in the
abstract, the equal distribution of political power is intrinsically good.
This might be held on the very plausible ground that I don’t want You to
have too much of it over Me, and You don’t want Me to have too much
of it over You – and so, equality is a good bargain, a good compromise.
We’ll say a bit more about that later, pausing only to anticipate further
discussion with the observation that one possible way to divide power equally is
to give everyone none: 0 = 0, after all, and so No power for everybody is Equal
power(lessness) for everybody. Of course, this is no longer what most people
would call „Democracy”; its proper name is Anarchy. About that, there will be
quite a bit more later in this essay.
(2) Perhaps the majority of enthusiasts want to claim that democracy, while
not an intrinsic good, is good because of what it promotes: it promotes, so it
is claimed, the general liberal ideals of society better than alternatives. Those
ideals are, especially: prosperity and peace, but also – insofar as that is different
– the achievement or satisfaction of (other) basic civil rights, such as freedom of
religion, speech, and other such goods. Democracies, they argue, generally are
(2a) wealthier than other societies.
(2b) And as to peace, democracies don’t go to war against each other, and do
find cause to band together against the right sets of bandits and bad guys.
Jan Narveson: Democracy: is it both possible and desirable? 73
(2c) The most important sort of „peace” is the peace of mutual respect for
our liberties including, especially, our Civil liberties: people having their
own religions and lifestyles more generally, without forcible interference
by either their neighbors or by the State.
Since these are empirically checkable claims, we can then go into the facts,
and the results are, I think, at the least mixed.
As to prosperity, there is the developing case of China to worry about. A far
better example is provided by Hong Kong, which has never been a democracy,
but rose from the ashes after the second world war to become one of the
wealthiest societies in the orient. What’s more, it is very doubtful that it would
have done so well if it had been a Democracy. Obviously democracy is neither
a necessary nor sufficient for wealth. The most that can be said is that most
quite wealthy countries are democracies, and only a few wealthy countries are
not democracies. So the connection between democracy and wealth is at least
loose. This is not very surprising, for reasons well known to economists.
As to international peace, the case that democracies don’t make war on each
other is pretty good, though we get into niceties of definition after awhile. On
the other hand, there is the suspicion that the world is as peaceful as it is (ahem!)
because of the long nuclear hegemony of the two „greatest powers,” especially of
the U.S.A.
Unfortunately, the U.S.A. stands out, along with many others, as an example
of how civil and other liberties can suffer at the hands of democracy.
Let’s turn back to theory for a moment. Let’s first examine the pure idea
of majority rule. Some would deny that democracy is majority rule. How you
explain the basic idea of „rule by the people” without that idea is an interesting
question, to which we’ll return briefly below. But let’s start by just considering
majority rule – „mob rule” if you like.
It quickly becomes obvious that a majority could violate any number of
liberal desiderata. A majority could impose religions, suppress freedom of
speech, make war on homosexuals or drug users, impose onerously high taxes
and otherwise mismanage the economy. Come to think, it not only could do all
those things, it has done them, and in spades. The point is that liberalism is one
thing, democracy is another, and there is considerable tension between them.
All democracies today have constitutions, limiting to some degree, somehow,
the potential of majority rule for curtailing individuals liberties. It is often said,
indeed, that „If various non-majority rights are not upheld, then it simply isn’t a
democracy.” Unfortunately, how you establish a conceptual connection between
the two isn’t gone into: the claim is simply that Democracy = elections plus
constitutional constraints –– no questions asked why, if majority rule is so great,
we should have individual rights to worry about at all, nor what democracy
has to do with such rights. The point of this essay, though, is to push that very
question – hard.
74 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
some mutual problems by voting. Whatever it is, it is clear that such a theory
would have to be prior to democracy.
Consider this, from Melissa Schwarzenberg:1 „The reason why we ought to
want democratic decision making in the first place is because we properly believe
each member’s views and opinions ought equally to affect the outcome of group
decision making.” That is her version of an answer to my question. But what does
she mean here? She could mean either that we, as it were, always do „properly
believe” – that it is proper to believe – that each person’s views ought equally etc.?
Or does she mean that if in a given case it is (for some reason, not yet stated)
„proper” to believe that, then we should want democratic decision making?
The difference is radical, though I am not sure that Dr. Schwarzenberg has
noticed that. Enthusiasts for democracy, I rather think, just tend to think that of
course just everything is such that everybody ought to have an equal say about it.
But ordinary people believe no such thing, we may be sure, and it is hard to see
any reason why they should. I do not think that the opinions of my fellow man
are in the remotest way wanted or to be consulted, let alone given „equal weight”
with, say, those of my wife when it comes to doing the grocery shopping, or
deciding whether to take that job in Connecticut, and so on. I don’t think that,
and I doubt that much of anyone else does either. You’d have to be a very „far-
out” ideological enthusiast to think any such thing.
Where, then, is the argument needed to explain why just this and only this
sizable group of people ought to be democratically equipped for decision-making
about this or that issue for that whole particular group?
we must see to B’s welfare when we pursue our own. But of course, it’s
not impossible. And then what?
3. As to education, it is obvious from the start that A can be educated and
B not – there is no obvious reason to think that if anybody is educated,
then everybody must be. or vice versa, or that if A educates B, it will be
impossible to prevent C from horning in for free.
It has become a mantra of contemporary societies that people have,
somehow, rights to the (free!) provision of all these things. Well, why? Of course,
it can also be pointed out that it is not so long ago that no such thing was
thought by most people. Governments did not think it their duty to provide any
of the above. What they may have thought it their duty to provide, and what
their constituents very likely thought it their duty to provide, was security and,
hopefully, liberty – two things that governments have been notoriously erratic
about, to say the least. And those are indeed public goods. I cannot be secure
unless you somehow refrain from assaulting me, and vice versa. I can do x only
if you don’t prevent me, and vice versa. Liberty is liberty from the incursions
of others; security is the absence of danger from others. Only action (that is,
inaction, especially) by others can provide these thing.
Majorities can indeed act so as to help defend, and even improve, the security
and liberty or each of us. Unfortunately, they can also do just the opposite, as we
have seen. Since democracy gives every citizen power over every other citizen,
in the form of the vote, the problem is how to restrict it, to tie its hands, so that
it will tend to promote rather than defeat the security and liberty of each of us.
Democratic Voting
Why do people vote, when they do? That is, what are they trying to achieve
by voting? There are two general answers to distinguish here.
(1) Sometimes, they are trying to promote their own interests, but by
political means.
(2) In other cases, they have ideas about what society should be like –
what they want other people to be doing. Those are akin to political
philosophies, more or less (mostly less, of course, in the sense of
articulated and developed doctrines, but nonetheless political attitudes
rather than expressions of, strictly speaking, self-interest.)
For our purposes, we need not try to make more refined distinctions, as for
instance between „strictly speaking” self interest, interests in family, in ethnic
associates, in religious affiliates, business partners, and so on up to national
and perhaps global sympathies. What does matter is that both of these general
categories, and all those in between, raise the same difficult question: namely,
why? In the case of self-interest, why should Harry be subject to coercion in
order to benefit Hilary? – and in the case of ideological-type motivations, why
should Harry be subject to coercion in order to advance a political philosophy
held and pressed by Hilary, but with which he, Harry, does not agree?
80 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
3. Superiority of Markets
As to the first, we should surely have a constitutional mechanism for assuring
that anything that can be done by the market should be done that way, rather
Jan Narveson: Democracy: is it both possible and desirable? 81
than by a political method. Markets have the signal virtue that since nobody has
to buy or sell, they target goods at those interested, and not those who are not.
The fundamental problem guiding this inquiry is how to justify imposition by
majorities on minorities, that being the defining hallmark of democracy. The
market avoids this, because all parties are required to respect the property rights
of all persons. (That will only be an adequate characterization if we understand,
as Locke did, that one’s „property” includes one’s own actions, body, and
psychology. What would usually be called ‘property rights’ specifically would be
extensions of the basic rights that Locke specifies, to life, health, and liberty –
all such rights being negatively construed, as Locke does in pronouncing the
fundamental „Law of Nature” to consist in a prohibition of harm of all those
things, plus property in the narrow sense.)
This outcome would be assured by strong property rights. If we cannot,
as John Locke’s idea would have it, impose taxes against the consent of each
individual taxed, then confinement to market methods is evidently assured.
This might be thought elementary – and we can also be confident that such
a provision has no real-world chance of being incorporated into any constitution.
The interesting question is, Why not? And the answer, I think, has to be, serious,
near-total, misunderstandings of the free market, as an institution and as an idea.
Alas, that is the subject of books, and calls for a much longer treatment than this.
2 I owe this pity summary to Henry Hazlitt, author of the essential book Economics in One Lesson.
Jan Narveson: Democracy: is it both possible and desirable? 83
OVERSIMPLIFICATION
X X X X
I II
X X X X
One now loses sight of the fact that no X comes near the boundary as well
as gains the misimpression that all four quadrants have the same structure.
Optical myopia results involves indistinct vision, having an indefinite
image of things. Cognitive myopia is much like that, consisting in an imprecise
conception of things thanks to a lack of clarity in their conceptual (rather than
visual) apprehension. Both alike involve a failure to distinguish things that are
in fact distinct–or the reverse. There are two prime forms of cognitive myopia,
namely conflation when things that are different take to be alike (say both X and
Y seen as Z), and confusion when things that are the same take to be different
(say with one instance of X seen as such but the other as Y). Conflation often
has the result that irregularities are seen as regular; confusion has the result that
regularities are seen as irregular. Conflation often leads to seeing uniformity
where there should be difference. Confusion oversimplifies matters by seeing
difference where there is actually uniformity.
To see more clearly how oversimplification can create misunderstanding
consider someone whose visual myopia is such that he has is incompetent with
regard to telling 5 and 6 apart. As a result of such an inability to distinguish 5
from 6 the individual may well through conflation and failure to distinguish:
90 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
envision 56 as .
Or again, the individual may through confusion mix up 55 and 66 and so:
envision 56 as 65.
Conflation obscures sameness, confusion obscures difference. And neglect
of either results in oversimplification of complexity. Such modes forms of
cognitive myopia have very different ramifications for our grasp of the world’s
lawful comportment.
Suppose that we are in reality dealing with the perfectly regular series
R: 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 . . .
but due to the occasional confusion of a mild cognitive myopia we may then
actually „see” this (be it by way of observation or conceptualization) as
M: 6 5 5 5 6 5 5 5 6 5 . . .
But observe that our inability to distinguish has here effectively transmuted
a lawful regularity into a random disorder. It is then clear (via „Mill’s Methods of
Agreement and Difference”) that there is no causal correlation between R and M.
The supposition of (mild) myopia thus induces a drastic disconnection between
the two levels of consideration at issue, with the lawful order of R giving way to
lawlessness in regard to its model M.
Thus even so crude an example suffices to show that lawful order can
unravel and be destroyed by the confusion engendered by an occasional inability
to discern differences. And this relatively rudimentary observation has far-
reaching implications. In specific, it means that if even if the world is possessed
of a highly lawful order, this feature of reality may well fail to be captured in even
a mildly myopic representation of it.
Again suppose realty as per I is oversimplified as per II:
X
X
X
I II
X
X
X X X X X X X X X
X X X X o X
X X
X X X X X X X X X
Your ignorance then engenders the misleading impression that the rows are
all alike instead of realizing the differences at issue.
In oversimplifying we slide into falsification. Is oversimplification thereby
lying? No! And for good reason.
Lying is falsification with the intent to deceive. Falsity is here the aim of the
enterprise. But oversimplification is falsification with the intent to convey truth.
Falsity is here merely collateral damage.
And there is a further crucial difference. The liar affirms what he believes
to the false: to lie is to affirm a recognized falsehood. In oversimplification
we do indeed commit to falsehoods: but we do not realize what they are. The
oversimplifier is agnostic about the falsity of which he commits. Lying in
consequence is ethically reprehensible, while oversimplification is in general
ethically venial because inadvertant.
3. Conclusion
It is time to conclude. The jist of the present discussion can be summarized
in a few lines effectively consisting in the following Q/A sequence:
– Why do we simplify matters? A: Because this provides us with
indispensable economies of procedure.
– Why do we oversimplify? A: Because the difference between
constructive simplification and oversimplification is something that
can be discerned only ex post facto with the wisdom of hindsight.
– What does oversimplification portend? A: Oversimplification always
carries the risk of error and misunderstanding.
– Why risk the negativities of oversimplification? A: Because there is no help
for it; even in natural science it is an unavoidable part of rational procedure.
It has been the aim of the project to expound and explain this line of
thought–and to exhibit in detail the consequences and implications of the
unwelcome realties that ensue in its wake.4
4 Paper presented in the Luncheon Lecture series at the University of Pittsburgh’s Philosophy
of Science Center in September of 2014.
Werner Sauer Original Scientific Paper
University of Graz UDK 111 Аристотел
14 Аристотел
I
First, let us state the issue.1 The Metaphysics text in its present form consisting
of fourteen books is evidently, „on the face of it”, as Ross in the Introduction to
his great Metaphysics edition puts it, „not a single finished work”.2 This much
is common consent, for since from Werner Jaeger onwards the Chorizontes
(οἱ χωρίζοντες), as we may call them by an old name originally given to those
ancient grammarians who split up Homer into two, scrutinized the structure of
the work, its unity vanished once and for all; these efforts at dissecting it into
strata and treatises were carried to the extreme by Ingemar During, who viewed
the Metaphysics as nothing more than a collection of separate treatises, calling
them Schrift Alpha, Schrift A elatton, Schrift Beta, and so on.3
But even During left untouched the unity, evident as it is, among the
three books ZHΘ – Jaeger’s Substanzbücher –, calling them the Schrift ZHΘ on
sensible substances, περὶ οὐσιῶν αἰσθητῶν.4 On the other hand, it is common
wisdom that the short book E does not belong to the treatise ZHΘ but (During’s
radicalism set aside) rather to the preceding book Γ, as the end of a treatise
ΑΒΓΕ, as is argued, e.g., by Ross.5
Now, this tearing off Ε from the following book Z is bound to strike the
innocent reader of the Metaphysics as odd, and even more so when finding the
very same Ross stating this apparent plain truth that „[t]he substantial continuity
of ΖΗΘ with E is [...] evident”:6 how can one and the same Aristotle scholar, and
a great one indeed, both affirm a substantial continuity between the two books
Ε and Z and yet deny that they are parts of what originally was a single unified
treatise?
Of course, that substantial continuity Ross is speaking of was earlier
noted as well by those luminaries of 19th century Aristotle scholarship, Bonitz
and Schwegler. Bonitz, although believing the seven books ΑΒΓΕΖΗΘ to have
been written uno tenore et eodem disputationis contextu, nevertheless accorded
a special unity to the books ΕΖΗΘ which he says ita inter se sunt connexi, ut
alterum divellere ab altero aegre sustineas, and, secondly, that in E, as if it were
the beginning of a new treatise altogether, quasi de integro disputationem videtur
ordiri;7 and Schwegler even held the severing of Ε from Z as a separate book to
be a blunder of some early editor of the Metaphysics.8
By and large, we will in the following defend the view of Bonitz and of
Schwegler to the extent that Ε belongs together with ΖΗΘ, though conceding
to our more recent Chorizontes a split, albeit of course not one between E and
Z, but between E and the preceding book Γ, which was seen clearly by Bonitz
already (‘quasi de integro etc.’) who, however, shunned back from drawing the
natural conclusion (why so, will come forth in sec. III); and we shall also see that
to some extent at least Schwegler’s contention that E and Z are even one single
book is perfectly defensible.
II
Perhaps one would now expect the substantial connection of book E with
book Z which we have made so much of to be fleshed out in more detail. But
at this point this would be premature, and in any case it will become gradually
apparent as we proceed. Presently, let us simply look at certain textual evidences
for the unity among the Substanzbücher which are usually taken as well as
evidences for them having originally been a separate treatise.
These are, first of all, three back references, two of them in book Θ. The first
of these two is the beginning of the book:
[1] Now we have treated of what primarily is being and to which all the
other categories of being are referred, i.e., substance (περὶ μὲν οὖν τοῦ πρώτως
ὄντος καὶ πρὸς ὃ πᾶσαι αἱ ἄλλαι κατηγορίαι τοῦ ὄντος ἀναφέρονται εἴρηται, περὶ
τῆς οὐσίας).
For it is in virtue of the formula of substance that the others are called
beings, i.e. quantity and quality and the like; for they all will contain the formula
of substance, as we said in the first discussions (κατὰ γὰρ τὸν τῆς οὐσίας λόγον
λέγεται τἆλλα ὄντα, τό τε ποσὸν καὶ τὸ ποιὸν καὶ τἆλλα τὰ οὕτω λεγόμενα·
πάντα γὰρ ἕξει τὸν τῆς οὐσίας λόγον, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις λόγοις)
(Θ.1 1045b27–32).9
The reference is to Z.1, where Aristotle argues that all the other categorial
beings, the accidents, are beings only in virtue of being quantities, qualities etc. of
substance,10 and that therefore substance is primary in every respect, including
primacy ‘in formula’ (τῷ λόγῳ 1028a32, 34), that is, in account or definition.11
We have rendered the phrase ἐν τοῖς πρώτοις λόγοις in passage [1] as ‘in
the first discussions’, these πρῶτοι λόγοι being of course about primary being
i.e. substance mentioned right before. Now the word λόγοι when used for
referring to some other text may of course also mean ‘treatise’, or ‘tract’, but here
this cannot be the case, since ‘in the first treatise’ would make no sense: thus,
Aristotle refers back to Z.1 as the beginning of his discussion of substance in ZH
within a work to which Θ itself belongs.12
The other of those two back references is Θ.8 1049b27–29:
[2] It has been said in our discussion of substance that everything which
comes to be, comes to be something from something and by something, and this
is the same in species as it (εἴρηται δὲ ἐν τοῖς περὶ τῆς οὐσίας λόγοις ὅτι πᾶν τὸ
γιγνόμενον γίγνεται ἔκ τινος τὶ καὶ ὑπό τινος, καὶ τοῦτο τῷ εἴδει τὸ αὐτό).
The reference is to Z.7 1032a13f., a24f., Z.8 1033a24–27, b29–32; qua
reference, this one differs from the former only by saying explicitly that the
earlier discussion it refers to is about substance, περὶ τῆς οὐσίας: but this is only
to be expected because unlike the former reference it does not have mentioned
the topic of those λόγοι right before in the preceding sentence.
Both Ross and Frede & Patzig claim that the Θ references indicate that
originally book Z was the beginning of a separate treatise distinct from the
books ΑΒΓΕ. Ross says „ZHΘ evidently form a fairly continuous work”, which of
course is uncontested, but to add:
9 The translation, as in the following Metaphysics quotes, is based on, but by no means identical
with, Ross’s, in vol. II of The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation, 2
vols. Ed. by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. The Greek Metaphysics text we
use is Jaeger’s edition, W. Jaeger ed., Aristotelis Metaphysica, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957.
Citations from other works of Aristotle are taken from the Bekker edition, Aristotelis Opera,
2 voll. Ex rec. Immanuelis Bekkeri. Ed. altera quam curavit Olof Gigon, Berlin: de Gruyter,
1960. (Our numbering of Aristotle quotes is intended to facilitate cross references).
10 They are not entia properly speaking but only entis, as Aquinas puts it, or in Alexander’s
phrase, they are only οὐσίας τι, something-of-substance. See S. Thomae Aquinatis in
duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio. Ed. M.-R. Cathala & R. M. Spiazzi,
Turin; Rome: Marietti, 1964, lib. XI, lect. 3, §2197; lib. XII, lect. 1, §2419. For Alexander’s
phrase, see Alexandri Aphrodisiensis in Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria. Ed. Michael
Hayduck, Berlin: Reimer, 1891 (CIAG I), p.242, ll.22, 23 (fuller quote in n.24 below). – As to
Aristotle himself, see the Z.1 part of citation [9] below.
11 “Necessarily in the formula of each [of the other] things the formula of substance is
contained”, ἀνάγκη γὰρ ἐν τῷ ἑκάστου λόγῳ τὸν τῆς οὐσίας ἐνυπάρχειν Z.1 1028a35f.
12 That is, Θ.1–9, dealing with potential and actual being; Θ.10, turning to the topic of being as
the true (and non-being as the false), is a different matter altogether.
96 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
13 “Man wird also sagen durfen, das Z und H eine ursprungliche Einheit bildeten, das es
aber fraglich ist, ob Θ schon von Anfang an Teil dieser Einheit war. Nennen wir diese
ursprungliche Einheit, Θ 8 folgend, die Ahandlung „Über die ousia“.
Manches spricht dafür, das es sich bei dieser Abhandlung „Über die ousia“ um eine
ursprunglich selbständige Abhandlung handelte, die erst später, nun schon durch Θ 1–9
ergänzt, als Kernstück für die „Metaphysik“ verwendet wurde. Nicht nur bezieht sich Θ 8,
1049b27–28, auf ZH als die Abhandlung über die ousia, auch I 2, 1053b17–18, verweist auf
ZH als „die Ausfuhrungen uber die ousia und das Seiende“ [...], so als handle es sich um
eine selbständige Schrift. Z beginnt ohne Verbindungspartikel, so als handle es sich um den
Anfang einer ganzen Schrift. Dazu past auch, das Θ 1, 1045b32, sich auf den Anfang von Z
so bezieht, als handle es sich um den Anfang einer Abhandlung”. Frede & Patzig [see n.4],
vol. I, p.22f.; cf. p.28f.).
14 As Ross [see n.1], vol. I, p.xxii puts it, “I is evidently a more or less self-contained treatise,
dealing with the nature of unity and of kindred conceptions”.
Werner Sauer : Metaphysics EZHΘ: Aristotle’s Unifed Treatise περὶ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ τοῦ ὄντος... 97
III
Book K is a somewhat odd thing. It consists of two clearly distinguishable
parts, of which the first, K.1–8, is a parallel version of the content of the books
BΓE, whereas the second, K.9–12, consists of almost literal excerpts from the
Physics16 and hence does not concern us here at all.
Now from the fact that K.1–8 corresponds to BΓE, and from the general
assumption that it is a very early text, the conclusion is ordinarily drawn that E
actually is connected with B and Γ, and not with the books ZHΘ which certainly
were written fairly late. Ross, for instance, says:
The doubt which has sometimes been expressed on the question whether
there is any real connexion between E and ΑΒΓ is set at rest by the fact that the
first part of K [K.1–8], which is certainly very old and may well be a pupil’s notes
15 See Ross [see n.1], vol. I, p.xviii, and for Frede & Patzig the quote in n.12.
16 More precisely, the dividing line is in K.8 1065a26.
98 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
17 Ross [see n.1], vol. I, p.xviif. He even finds it apt, ibid. p.xxvi, to „even conjecture that K
represents an earlier course than BΓE“. This was definitely asserted by Jaeger: see Werner
Jaeger, Aristoteles. Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, Berlin: Weidmannsche
Buchhandlung, 1923, p.216ff. See also end of sec. V.
18 Frede & Patzig [see n.4], vol. I, p.28: “Das E zu der Reihe A, B, Γ gehort, wird [...] auch
dadurch belegt, das K in seinem ersten Teil den Gedankengang von BΓE kontinuierlich in
einer Parallelfassung vortragt (K 1–8 ist vermutlich die Nachschrift eines Schulers von einer
Vorlesungsreihe, die Aristoteles selbst einmal vorgetragen hat)“.
19 “There is a science which investigates being qua being and those things which belong to this
in virtue of itself “, ἔστιν ἐπιστήμη τις ἣ θεωρεῖ τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν καὶ τὰ τούτῳ ὑπάρχοντα καθ᾽
αὑτό 1003a21f. – „Therefore we also must grasp the first causes [and principles] of being qua
being“, διὸ καὶ ἡμῖν τοῦ ὄντος ᾗ ὂν τὰς πρώτας αἰτίας [καὶ ἀρχὰς a29] ληπτέον a31f.
20 οὐ γὰρ γένος τὸ ὄν, An. Post. II.7 92b14.
21 As, e.g., both the donkey and the engine are called ὄνος. The example is in Topics I.15
107a19f.
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to the affective qualities, the third class, and to the more stable and less stable
states, e.g. knowledge versus health, these being the first class in the category of
qualities in Categories chapter 8; and κίνησις certainly stands, as it often does, for
the categories of acting, ποιεῖν, and being acted upon, πάσχειν.23
But then, the main difference between this K.3 list [8] and the Γ.2 list [6]
is that the K.3 list is confined to categorial being only, expressly called τὸ ὂν
ἅπαν, the entirety of being, apart from substance consisting of „quantity, quality,
where, and the other categories”, as Ps.-Alexander, commenting on 1061a10f.,
puts it.24
And this difference is all-important. For on the Γ.2 approach by way of the
πρὸς-ἕν structure of being there is no basis nor any motivation to separate out
from the entirety of what is called being first categorial being, and to set aside
other sorts of being such as privations and negations:
(a) no basis, since the fundamental dividing line is the one between being
strictly so called, i.e. substance, and what is, in Alexander’s phrase which
occurs precisely in his commentary on [6], only οὐσίας τι, something-of-
substance, and of such kind is a privation just as well as a non-substantial
categorial being, a quality, a quantity, and the like;25 and
(b) no motivation rergarding the determination of the proper object of
the science of being qua being, since according to the Γ.2 approach a
science whose domain forms a πρὸς-ἕν structure studies everything
within it (passage [7]), albeit primarily its ἕν, that is substance in the
case of this particular science; thus, even non-categorial beings such
as privations or negations will not be wholly excluded from it. And to
add, it is telling that in K.3 after 1061a10f. nothing follows which would
correspond to Γ.2 1003b11–19, where Aristotle argues for this.
Thus, the K.3 list of being, already confined as it is to categorial being,
presupposes some eliminating procedure, which cannot stem from the notion of
have got this name from some one thing, viz., substance, which is being in the principal
sense”, οὕτω καὶ τὰ ὄντα ἀπὸ ἑνός τινος, τῆς οὐσίας, ἥπερ κυρίως ὄν ἐστι, τὴν προσηγορίαν
ταύτην εἴληφε. Alexandri etc. [see n.9], p.642 ll.22f. Similarly Aquinas ([see n.9], lib. XI, lect.
3, §2197) identifies the ens inquantum ens of his Latin Metaphysics with ens simpliciter, which
is what in se habet esse, scilicet substantia.
23 See, e.g., Ethica Eudemia I.8 1217b29, or Z.4 1029b25, and Frede & Patzig [see n.4] ad loc.,
vol. II, p.62f.
24 εἰσὶ δὲ ταῦτα, i.e. the things referred to some one common thing, ποσὸν ποιὸν ποῦ καὶ αἱ
λοιπαὶ κατηγορίαι.
Alexandri etc. [see n.9], p.642 ll.29f. The same confinement to categorial being is taken for
granted in Aquinas’ comments on the K.3 list, see the reference in n.21.
25 In fact, Alexander applies the phrase in particular to non-categorial items, among them
privations, presumably in order to emphasize their status as beings: “And both the destructions
and changes of substance we call beings, because these too [and not only such things as the
πάθη which are qualities] are something-ofsubstance [...] And likewise the privations too: for
blindness is a being because it is something-of-substance”, καὶ τὰς φθορὰς δὲ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ
μεταβολὰς ὄντα λέγομεν, ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα οὐσίας τί ἐστιν […] ὁμοίως καὶ αἱ στερήεις· ἡ γὰρ
τυφλότης ὄν τι ὅτι οὐσίας τι. Alexandri etc. [see n.9], p.242 ll.21–23.
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a πρὸς-ἕν structure, which is to say that the K.3 list cannot be understood with
reference to Γ.2 only.
On the other hand, it bears a striking resemblance to something in Z.1.
After having stated at the beginning of Z.1 once more that being, here meaning
categorial being, λέγεται πολλαχῶς 1028a10, and having argued that substance
is the primary being, he continues with what we best present face to face with
the K.3 list:
K.3: in the same way as the healthy Z.1: primary being is substance,
[9] everything that-is is spoken of (τὸ ὂν ἅπαν λέγεται): the other things [the accidents]
are called
for in virtue of being an affection or a permanent beings (τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα λέγεται ὄντα)
or a transient state or a movement of being qua in virtue of some of them being
quantities of
being, or something else of this sort being in that sense, others
qualities of it,
(τῷ γὰρ τοῦ ὄντος ᾗ ὃν πάθος ἢ ἕξις ἢ διάθεσις others affections of it, and others
something
ἢ κίνησις ἢ τῶν ἄλλων τι τοιούτων εἶναι), else of this sort (τῷ τοῦ οὕτως
ὄντος τὰ μὲν
each of these things is called a being ποσότητες εἶναι, τὰ δὲ
ποιότητες, τὰ δὲ πάθη,,
((λέγεται ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ὄν) (1061a8–10). τὰ δὲ ἄλλο τι τοιοῦτον)
(1028a18–20).
The two passages resemble each other, both in expression by their τῷ …
ὄντος … εἶναι and materially by their taking into account categorial being only,
to such an extent that one cannot help but to surmise that the K.3 list of being
relates really rather to Z.1 as its background, and not to Γ.2.
But in order to see more clearly what is going on here, and to pin down the
eliminating procedure that contracts the indiscriminate Γ.2 list of being to what
we have in K.3, we must now turn to E.2–4 to which in Κ corresponds chapter 8.
IV
Having in E.1 re-opened the quest for the principles and causes of being
qua being (passage [4]), and having towards the end of it identified the science
of supreme being (ἡ θεολογικὴ ἐπιστήμη) with the science of being qua being
i.e. of being in general – more on this will come in sec. V, (γ) –, Aristotle at the
beginning of E.2 once again says, as he had done at the beginning of Γ.2 (passage
[5]), that being is a πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον. But the way he now explains this is
entirely different from what we have in Γ.2, by taking up the fourfold partition
of being in Δ.7:
[10] But since being, so called without qualification, is spoken of in many
ways (ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ τὸ ὂν τὸ ἁπλῶς λεγόμενον λέγεται πολλαχῶς), of which
[a] one was [in Δ.7] accidental being (ὧν ἓν μὲν ἦν τὸ κατὰ συμβεβηκός [sc. ὄν]),
[b] another being as the true, and non-being as the false (ἕτερον δὲ τὸ ὡς
ἀληθές, καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν τὸ ὡς ψεῦδος),
102 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
[c] but apart from these there are the figures of predication (παρὰ ταῦτα δ᾽
ἐστὶ τὰ σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας), e.g., what [a thing is, i.e., substance], of what
quality, of what quantity, where, when, and anything else that signifies in this way
(οἷον τὸ μὲν τί, τὸ δὲ ποιόν, τὸ δὲ ποσόν, τὸ δὲ πού, τὸ δὲ ποτέ, καὶ εἴ
τι ἄλλο σημαίνει τὸν τρόπον τοῦτον),
[d] again apart from all these, potential and actual being (ἔτι παρὰ ταῦτα
πάντα τὸ δυνάμει καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ [ὄν]) [...] (E.2 1026a33-b2).
No word of a πρὸς-ἕν, or focal-meaning structure here. Let us further note
just this point, that although the third member of this list, which is categorial
being, is itself again a πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον, in that the categories are summa
genera (see, e.g., Δ.28 1024b12–16), this is not mentioned here in E.2 at all,
whereas it is mentioned in Δ.7:
[11] For ‘to be’ signifies in as many ways as the figures of predication are
spoken of ([...] τὰ σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας· ὁσαχῶς γὰρ λέγεται, τοσαυταχῶς τὸ
εἶναι σημαίνει) (1017a23f.);
and this again is something which will prove significant.
After introducing the fourfold partition of being, Aristotle in E.2 immediately,
with the words
[12] Now since being is spoken of in many ways, we must first say concerning
accidental being that there is no scientific study of it (ἐπεὶ δὴ πολλαχῶς λέγεται
τὸ ὄν, πρῶτον περὶ τοῦ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς λεκτέον, ὅτι οὐδεμία ἐστὶ περὶ αὐτὸ
θεωρία) (1026b2–4),
turns to the discussion, lasting till the end of chapter 3, of accidental being,
that is, beings that are compounds resting on accidental predications, e.g.,
musical Socrates who exists because Socrates is musical; and then in chapter 4
he discusses more briefly being as the true which rests on the use of ἔστι in
the sense of ‘is true’ and consists in such judgment-contents as, e.g., Socrates is
musical, or Socrates is not pale.26
And both these modes of being are excluded from the domain of the science
of being qua being (1027b28–1028a3): accidental being has no determinate
cause such that it cannot be studied by any science, and being as the true is
disqualified by its being mind-dependent, being „an affection of thought”, τῆς
διανοίας τι πάθος 1027b34–28a1. There is, however, also a common reason for
their exclusion, which is much more interesting:
[13] and both are around the remaining genus of being, and do not indicate
there being any extra nature of being (καὶ ἀμφότερα περὶ τὸ λοιπὸν γένος τοῦ
ὄντος, καὶ οὐκ ἔξω δηλοῦσιν οὖσάν τινα φύσιν τοῦ ὄντος) (1028a1f.),
that is to say that they are parasitical upon categorial being: musical Socrates
does indicate the categories of substance and of quality, but ‘no extra nature of
being’, and the same holds of the being as the true Socrates is musical.
26 An example for this alethic use of ἔστι by Aristotle himself is in the beginning of the Posterior
Analytics: To acquire knowledge we must beforehand assume, for instance, „that in every
case either to affirm or to deny it is true (ὅτι μὲν ἅπαν ἢ φῆσαι ἢ ἀποφῆσαι ἀληθές), that it is
(ὅτι ἔστι)“, An. Post. I.1 71a13f.
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Thus, „these two are to be dismissed”, ταῦτα μὲν ἀφείσθω 1028a3: „But what
is to be investigated”, σκεπτέον 1028a3, „are the causes and principles of being
itself qua being”, τοῦ ὄντος αὐτοῦ τὰ αἴτια καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς ᾗ ὄν a3f.
From the context it is plain that this being itself, a few lines before, 1027b31,
called κυρίως ὄν, principal being, with substance, quality, and quantity as
examples, is categorial being, being ‘according to the figures of predication’.
And with that we finally have the eliminating procedure we need to
understand the restriction of the Γ.2 list of being to categorial being in the
corresponding K.3 list: in a word, the K.3 list presupposes E.2–4, or within K,
chapter 8. Let us now look briefly at this chapter.
K .8 does not start, as E.2 does (passage [10]), with presenting first the
fourfold partition of being according to Δ.7, but presupposes it as familiar:
though it begins with almost the same words as E.2 up to the mention of
accidental being, it then proceeds, without any enumeration of the other three
modes of being, straightforwardly to the discussion of that mode:
[14] But since being, without qualification, is spoken of in several ways (ἐπεὶ
δὲ τὸ ἁπλῶς ὂν κατὰ πλείους λέγεται τρόπους), of which one is what is called
to be accidentally (ὧν εἷς ἐστὶν ὁ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς εἶναι λεγόμενος), we must
consider first what is being in this way (σκεπτέον πρῶτον περὶ τοῦ οὕτως ὄντος)
(K.8 1064b15–17).
Even more obvious becomes that presuppositon when within the discussion
of accidental being as contrast to it categorial being shows up in passing, which
is here, as in Δ.7 but not in E.2 where Aristotle speaks only of ‘the figures of
predication’, called ὂν καθ᾽ αὑτό, being in its own right, or in virtue of itself:27
[15] But it is plain that of accidental being (τοῦ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ὄντος)
there are no causes and principles of the same kind as those of being in its own
right (τοῦ καθ᾽ αὑτὸ ὄντος) (K.8 1065a6–8).
And similarly out of the blue, so to speak, being as the true shows up in the
closing lines of the E.2–4 part of K.8 (cf. n.15), corresponding to E.4 1027b29–
1028a3 where being as the true, together with coincidental being, is dismissed:
[16] But as to being as the true and accidental being (τὸ δ᾽ ὡς ἀληθὲς ὂν
καὶ τὸ κατὰ συμβεβηκός), the former lies in a combination of thought and is
an affection of it – therefore it is not the principles of being in this sense which
are sought, but of being which is outside and separable (περὶ δὲ τὸ ἔξω ὂν καὶ
χωριστόν). And the latter, I mean accidental being (λέγω δὲ τὸ κατὰ συμβεβηκός).
And the latter, I mean accidental being (λέγω δέ τό κατά συμβεβηκός), is not
necessary but indetermined, and its causes are unordered and indefinite (K.8
1065a21–26).28
27 Δ.7 1017a7f.: τὸ ὂν λέγεται τὸ μὲν κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς τὸ δὲ καθ᾽ αὑτό – a22f.: καθ᾽ αὑτὰ δὲ
εἶναι λέγεται ὅσαπερ σημαίνει τὰ σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας, „to be in their own right are said
the things that are signified by the figures of predication“.
28 We may note that ἔξω is used here differently from how it is used in E.4 1028a2 (passage
[13]), this K.8 use spoiling the insight that accidental being and being as the true are parasital
upon categorial being.
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Oddly, Jaeger ([see n.16], p.217) takes the rather casual way in which
the A7/E.2 account of the πολλαχῶς of being makes its appearance in K.8 as
corroborating the view that K.8 (that is, its E.2–4 part) was written earlier than
E.2–4: but what to say on this except that it, if anything, is a case of putting
things upside down?
V
Let us now pause for a moment and draw together what has come forth in
the two previous sections, adding a few appropriate remarks and expansions.
(α) To begin with, the Δ.7 approach to the πολλαχῶς of being, taken up
in E.2 init. (passage [10]), is quite different from the Γ.2 approach in terms of
a πρὸς-ἕν relationship (passages [5], [6]). In this case Aristotle did little apart
from simply transferring to being what he had observed regarding the things
that are called healthy. In contrast, the Δ.7 approach is based on the various uses,
or senses, of είναι, ‘to be’: it may mean
– to be F accidentally, κατὰ συμβεβηκός, as, e.g., for Socrates to be
musical, yielding accidental compounds such as musical Socrates, in
contradistinction to
– to be F essentially, καθ᾽ αὑτό, as, e.g., for Socrates to be a man, for
whiteness to be a colour, and so on; to be essentially is equivalent to
be an item in a category, and the categories in turn are determined by
‘the figures of predication’, σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας, such that there are
as many ways of καθ᾽ αὑτὸ εἶναι as there are such σχήματα (see Δ.7
1017a22f., quoted in n.26).
– furthermore, there is the alethic use of εἶναι, according to which ἔστι
means ‘is true’, as we have said above (after passage [12], and see n.25),
yielding being as the true; and again,
– here is the potential construction of εἶναι, according to which it means
to be F potentially, or to be F actually.
In this much more complex configuratation not only categorial being is
sharply demarcated, but show up also ways of being that do not fit into the
πρὸς-ἕν structure of Γ.2 at all, viz., accidental being and being as the true. For
the πρὸς-ἕν structure of being fits best the case when one thing is predicated
of another, e.g. the quality musicalness of Socrates, the privation blindness of
Homer, the negation not-man of the God Zeus, and what not. But obviously
musical Socrates cannot be predicated of Socrates, nor the being as the true
Socrates is musical: these items relate quite differently to the entities they indicate,
in that these are already contained in categorial being such these two modes of
being are parasitical upon the latter.
The Δ.7 structure, however, does not exclude the πρὸς-ἕν structure but
includes it, in that it obtains within categorial being, as the Z.1 part of [9] shows.
Thus the structure of being according to the Δ.7 approach may be represented by
the following diagram:
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29 “Seltsamerweise fängt das neue Buch [Z] mit fast den gleichen Worten und derselben
Aufzählung der Bedeutungen des Seienden an, die unmittelbar vorhergeht: ‘Vom Seienden
spricht man in mehrfacher Bedeutung, wie wir früher – nun erwarten wir wenigstens einen
Rückweis auf die vorangehende Aufzählung in E 2, aber es folgt eine Überraschung – in
der Schrift über die mannigfaltigen Bedeutungen der Begriffe unterschieden haben. Denn
es bedeutet bald ein Etwas und ein bestimmtes Dieses, bald ein irgendwie beschaffenes oder
irgendwie groses oder ein beliebiges anderes aus der Anzahl dieser Art von Kategorumena’.
Hier ist ganz klar: wäre E 2 schon vorangegangen, als Aristoteles diesen Anfang des
Substanzbuches niederschrieb, so hätte er sich entweder auf die dort ausführlich entwickelten
verschiedenen Bedeutungen des Seienden berufen oder er hätte uberhaupt keine neue
Aufzahlung gegeben, da jeder sie ja im Gedächtnis hatte. Ist aber Z eine unabhängig von
106 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
belong, and a later, genuinely Aristotelian one, which Aristotle expounds in the
Substanzbücher and according to which metaphysics is the general investigation
of substance, or more precisely, of sensible substance: only later, when he joined
the originally independent Substanzbücher to the earlier treatise ABГE.1, Jaeger
argues, Aristotle wrote Ε.2–4 as connecting piece and added [18] to Ε.1 as a
marginal note, which, however, makes in his view the clash between the two
irreconcilable conceptions of metaphysics even more glaringly obvious.31
Such criticism is, however, entirely misconceived. The science of being qua
being is to study the principles and causes (or rather, the ‘becauses’, τὰ διότι)
thereof, and thus also, as Aristotle says in the last line of Ε.1, the τί ἐστι, the
What-it-is or quiddity, and that is, the essence or the What-it-is-to-be-something,
the τί ἦν εἶναι, of things, i.e., their formal cause. Now there are no causes, and
hence no essence, to be studied of what does not exist, see, for instance, An. Post.
II.8 93a18–20:
[19] It is not possible to grasp the Why before the That, and in the same
way it is plain that the What-it-is-to-be-something is not without the That (οὔτι
πρότερόν γε τὸ διότι δυνατὸν γνωρίσαι τοῦ ὅτι, δῆλον ὅτι ὁμοίως καὶ τὸ τί ἦν
εἶναι οὐκ ἄνευ τοῦ ὅτι ἐστίν): for it is impossible to know what a thing is, if we are
ignorant whether it is (ἀδύνατον γὰρ εἰδέναι τί ἐστιν, ἀγνοοῦντας εἰ ἔστιν) (cf.,
e.g., II.7 92b4–8).
Or in Aquinas’ measured words: quaestio enim quid est sequitur quaestionem
an est.32 And because of this existential presupposition it is plain that in case
there are only sensible i.e. movable substances, physics will be both First
Philosophy and the science of being qua being: but if there is an immovable
substance, theology as the study of that substance which then turns out to be
the first cause of motion in the universe, τὸ πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον αὐτό (Γ.8
1012b31, Л.7 1072b7), will also encompass per primam causam, so to speak, the
domain of the movable, and will thus be the science of being qua being as well.
Thus the only presupposition for the identification of theology with the science
of being qua being is that the universe does not fall apart into mere episodes
like a bad tragedy (as Aristotle puts it in N.3 1090b19f.), i.e., that the domains of
theology and of physics are interconnected, as they are by the relationship of first
mover to what is moved by it.33
Thus it would seem that our problem with the concluding passage of E.1 is
rather our being prejudiced by modern philosophy: the study of being qua being,
31 “Die Randglosse schafft den Widerspruch nicht fort, sie macht ihn im Gegenteil nur noch
sichtbarer [...] Die beiden Ableitungen des Begriffs der Metaphysik sind zweifellos nicht
aus ein und demselben geistigen Schöpfungsakt hervorgegangen. Zwei grundverschiedene
Gedankengänge sind hier ineinandergeschoben. Man sieht sogleich, das der theologisch-
platonische der ursprünglichere und ältere ist, [...] während umgekehrt die Definition des
ὂν ᾗ ὄν [...] der letzten und eigenartigsten Entwicklungsstufe des aristotelischen Denkens
[entspricht]”. Jaeger [see n.16], p.227.
32 S. Thomae Aquinatis in octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis Expositio. Ed. P. M. Maggiolo, Turin;
Rome: Marietti, 1965, lib. IV, lect. 10, §507.
33 It seems that Kirwan views the matter in a similar way: see Aristotle. Metaphysics Books Γ, Δ,
and E. Translated with notes by Christopher Kirwan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 21993, p.188f.
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then called ontology, is in the first place study of essence, and since Descartes
turned Aquinas’ dictum upside down by saying that
iuxta leges verae Logicae de nulla unquam re quaeri debet an sit, nisi prius
quid sit intelligatur, 34
it is simply taken for granted that essence is daseinsfrei, or at least can be
studied without bothering whether it is instantiated.35 But as soon as we take
seriously the fact that Aristotelian essence is in the way stated entirely different
from modern conceptions of essence, it will perhaps be not so difficult anymore
to appreciate Aristotle’s move in the concluding E.1 passage.
Of course, one might also raise the more basic question why Aristotle
did not move from the beginning of E.1, where being qua being was the issue,
straightforwardly to the πολλαχῶς of being which we have at the beginning
of E.2 in the first place, but went on with classifiying the theoretical sciences
to finally identifying the supreme one of them with the science of being qua
being and thus returning only after a long detour in a sort of Ringkomposition,
as classical scholars call such a thing, to the starting-point. A possible answer
could be this. Aristotle’s intention in the treatise de essentia et de ente was to
eventually study non-sensible substance, as he frequently says in it: 36 but since it
has now become clear that the supreme science of non-sensible substance is in a
certain way a science of sensible substance as well, he is justified in studying first
sensible substance, what he does in ZHΘ, as a sort of preparation for the study
of non-sensible substance which would have brought the treatise de essentia et de
ente to completion.
VI
We have, in some detail, considered arguments that have been brought forth
for severing book E from the Substanzbücher and attaching it to the books ABГE
and found them wanting in cogency; and simultaneously good evidence has
shown up for the view defended here, namely, that in E the discussion of the
science of being qua being is taken up not only quasi de integro, as Bonitz had
put it, but de integro simpliciter, i.e., Aristotle makes a fresh start in his efforts at a
systematic exposition on that subject, which he completes up to Θ and which he
then in I.2 refers to as the treatise περὶ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ περὶ τοῦ ὄντος, de essentia
et de ente.
We have followed the consistent thread of argument in book E from its very
beginning, saying that
34 Meditationes: Primae Responsiones. Descartes, OEuvres. Ed. Ch. Adam & P. Tannery, vol. VII,
Paris: Vrin, 1964, p.107f.
35 Thus our Graz celebrity Meinong found it even worthwile to formulate, in §3 of his 1904
essay Uber Gegenstandstheorie, a special principle of independence of essence from existence,
which he called „das Prinzip der Unabhangigkeit des Soseins vom Sein“. Alexius Meinong,
Uber Gegenstandstheorie. Selbstdarstellung, Hamburg: Meiner, 1978, p.8.
36 See, e.g., Z.2 1028b28–32, Z.3 1029b3–12, and Z.17 1041a7–9.
110 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
– the object of inquiry are the principles and causes of being qua being
(passage [4]),
through
– the identification of the science of supreme being with the science of
being qua being in the concluding passage [18] of E.1,
– the return to the topic of being qua being in terms of the fourfold
partition of being according to the Δ.7 scheme at the beginning of E.2
(passage [10]),
the result of the subsequent discussion first of accidental being, and then of
being as the true, viz.,
– that both accidental being and being as the true are to be excluded from
the domain of the science of being qua being,
stated towards the end of E.4, up to the conclusion that
– the object of inquiry, σκεπτέον 1028a3, are the principles and causes of
categorial being. And this is where Z.1 takes up the discussion, passage [17].
There remains to consider the transition from E to Z itself. After the
σκεπτέον conclusion 1028a3, E has one more sentence:
[20] But it is clear in the work in which we distinguished the various ways
in which things are spoken of, that being is spoken of in many ways (φανερὸν δ᾽
ἐν οἷς διωρισάμεθα περὶ τοῦ ποσαχῶς λέγεται ἕκαστον, ὅτι πολλαχῶς λέγεται τὸ
ὄν) (E.4 1028a4–6).
This last sentence of book E says in quite similar words the very same thing
as the next one which book Z begins with, to put it from passage [17] down once
more:
Being is spoken of in many ways, as we have distinguished them earlier in
our work on the various ways [in which things are spoken of] (τὸ ὂν λέγεται
πολλαχῶς, καθάπερ διειλόμεθα πρότερον ἐν τοῖς περὶ τοῦ ποσαχῶς) (1028a10f.).
Regarding the last sentence of E Ross ([see n.1], vol. I, p.366) says:
The remark is pointless here, as it has already been noted (1026a33 [E.2 in.])
that ‘being’ has a variety of meanings and two of them have been discussed in chs.
2–4. The sentence is a free version of the first sentence of Z, and is evidently a
later addition meant to indicate the connexion of the two books.
But of course, the last sentence of E is not pointless at all: just as Jaeger, Ross
does not appreciate that before in E.2 only the fourfold πολλαχῶς of being was
mentioned without any indication that the third member of that partition, viz.,
categorial being which is focussed on by now, itself is a πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον too.
Now, one of the two sentences is superfluous. On Bonitz’ view ([see n.6],
p.14, 294), it is a matter of indifference which one we retain. Following Schwegler’s
proposal ([see n.7], vol. IV, p.33), we delete the second one from the beginning of
Z. Then the whole passage from E.4 1028a3 to Z.1 1028a13 reads as follows:
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[21] These two [accidental being and being as the true] are to be dismissed
(ἀφείσθω), but what what is to be investigated (σκεπτέον 1028a3), are the causes
and principles of being itself qua being. But it is clear (φανερὸν δ᾽ a4) in the work
in which we distinguished the various ways in which things are spoken of, that
being is spoken of in many ways.
For it signifies (σημαίνει γάρ a11) on the one hand what a thing is and this-
something, on the other hand of what quality or quantity [it is] or each of the
other things predicated in this way.
No superfluous repetition and no disrupting separation of books conceals
anymore the uninterrupted flow of thought from E to Z: it is all of one piece.
And to add, the problem with the connective particle missing at the beginning
of Z.1 has vanished, just as another awkwardness has gone: the word πρότερον,
‘earlier’, in the first sentence of Z.1 which, as Frede & Patzig ([see n.4], vol. II, p.10)
note, Aristotle normally uses to refer to an earlier discussion in the same work.
Afterwards in Z.1, Aristotle argues that substance is among categoral being
primary, which here we need not go into any further anymore, and concludes
Z.1 with the words that
[22] we must investigate chiefly and primarily and so to speak exclusively
what that is which is being in that sense [i.e. substance] (ἡμῖν καὶ μάλιστα καὶ
πρῶτον καὶ μόνον ὡς εἰπεῖν περὶ τοῦ οὕτως ὄντος θεωρητέον τί ἐστιν) (1028b6f.).
Pay attention to the θεωρητέον 1028b7, ‘it is to be investigated’: it corresponds
exactly to the σκεπτέον 1028a3 towards the end of E.4. That σκεπτέον refers to
categorial being in its entirety as that what is to be studied by the science in
hand. This result was, however, only provisional. But now the θεωρητέον in the
last line of Z.1 has finally pinned down the most proper object of this science,
namely substance.
In this way, then, Z.1 completes in one continuous exposition what book E
is all about, and to this extent we can fully agree with Schwegler’s objection to
the separation of E from Z. But only this far, for then in Z.2 Aristotle does what
he usually is doing when starting an enquiry into some topic, namely, to survey
first various opinions about it embedded both in common sense and in relevant
scientific theories, which are in this case, among others, the doctrines of Plato
and of Speusippus in particular. (These two are mentioned Z.2 1028b19–21): and
so one may conclude that Z.1 still belongs to book E, and that book Z really
begins with Z.2.
In closing we may look back at / .1–8, and suggest the following alternative
hypothesis about it. When Aristotle prepared the course on First Philosophy
of which K.1–8 may well be a pupil’s notes, he used for it texts he already had
written some time ago, i.e. Β and Γ, but as well what he at that time was just
working on, viz., the treatise de essentia et de ente which as work in progress had
got at least as far as to what we have as Z.1: and this required him to adapt in that
most crucial point of the πολλαχῶς of being the Γ.2 list of being to Z.1, such that
the K.3 list resulted which bears that striking resemblance to Z.1 1028a18–20
which we observed when in section III (see [9]) we compared the two passages,
and which cannot possibly be explained by the Γ.2 approach to the matter.
Sanja Srećković Original Scientific Paper
University of Belgrade UDK 111.852
Ханслик Е. 78.01
Abstract: The paper deals with the formalistic view on music presented in Eduard
Hanslick’s treatise On the Musically Beautiful, which is taken to be the founding
work of the aesthtetics of music. In the paper I propose an interpretation of
Hanslick’s treatise which differs on many points from the interpretations displayed
in the works of several most influential contemporary aestheticians of music. My
main thesis is that Hanslick’s treatise is misunderstood and incorrectly presented
by these authors. I try to demonstrate this thesis by referring to Hanslick’s original
formulations in the German edition and by showing that my interpretation renders
Hanslick’s view far more coherent and his arguments successful in showing his
main conclusions. Accepting this alternative interpretation should have further
implications on many contemporary theories in the aesthetics of music that reckon
on the failure of Hanslick’s arguments as presented by usual interpretations.
Key words: aesthetics of music, Eduard Hanslick, formalism
Introduction
Eduard Hanslick is considered the founding father of the aesthetics of
music. His treatise On the Musically Beautiful1 has had such a great impact on
the understanding of music, that today, almost all of the authors who write about
music from a philosophical perspective, especially about music’s relation to
emotions, first state their attitude toward Hanslick’s view, and only then present
and defend their own view. In contemporary literature on music, a distinction
is made between the so-called Hanslickians and Hanslick’s critics, although all
of them mostly reject all of his arguments. In this paper, I shall not deal with
contemporary authors’ attempts to establish their own theories. Rather, I will
focus on their interpretations of the treatise On the Musically Beautiful, since,
in my opinion, that is where a more fundamental, and also more interesting
point can be found. Namely, I will argue that Hanslick’s treatise (or „little book”
1 I will comparatively follow Geoffrey Payzant’s translation: Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically
Beautiful, trans. Geoffrey Payzant, Indianapolis, 1986. (in further text – OMB), for it is this
translation that contemporary authors refer to, and Ivan Foht’s translation: Eduard Hanslik, O
muzički lijepom, pr. Ivan Foht, BIGZ, 1977. (in further text – OML), because it is more faithful
to the original than Payzant’s, which partly engages in interpreting the text. In addition, I
will provide parts of the original text when mentioning contentious or key terms: Eduard
Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, 13.–15. Auflage, Leipzig, 1922. (in further text – VMS).
114 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
4 It is easier to understand this statement in connection with the explanations Hanslick gives
later in the text, when he compares artistic and natural beauty or when he compares music
with arabesque and kaleidoscope: the beauty in all those examples is in the form itself,
independent of what is formed or shaped. This means that beautiful objects are beautiful due
to their formal properties, that is, the properties accessible by sensory perception. In the case
of both artistic and non-artistic objects, beauty concerns the order or harmony of the parts of
the object, while any possible purpose of the object does not affect its beauty.
5 See OMB, p. 3, OML, p. 42. Hanslick will explain what does make a beautiful thing beautiful
in the positive thesis.
6 Ibid.
7 See OMB, p. 5, OML, p. 45.
8 One possible answer that Hanslick mentions is that the difference is in the manner of arousal:
that music arouses emotions directly, as opposed to other arts where the arousal is mediated
by conceptual content. However, Hanslick objects to this by explaining that the arousal
caused by listening to music is also multiply mediated starting with sensations, imagination
and so on. Feeling is nothing more than a secondary effect of music – as well as of other arts
– see OMB, p. 4, 5–6, OML, p. 43, 45–46. Music does stand out in its effect on the feelings
because it affects us more rapidly and intensely than other arts. Hanslick demonstrates
further in the treatise that this difference is physiologically conditioned and does not arise
from the artistic aspect of music, but rather from its material that is in a certain relation with
our physiological organisation. Therefore, this effect cannot be something that is artistically
specific of music – see OMB, p. 50–1, OML, p. 118–9.
9 See OMB, p. 6, OML, p. 46.
116 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
embodies in shaping its works. According to this view, tones and their artistically
shaped relations would be mere raw material, the means of expression by which
the artist represents human feelings. Hence, what we enjoy in music and what
has an effect on us is not the melody and the harmony we are listening to, but
the feelings they signify (bedeuten).12
Hanslick’s statement, which will be under many attacks in later philosophical
works, is the claim that music is not able to represent definite feelings.13 In order
to demonstrate that, he proposes the following arguments:
In the first argument, Hanslick claims that what is specific for a feeling, what
renders it a definite feeling, and hence is the criterion by which we are able to
extricate and discern it from other feelings, is its conceptual content, a number
of conceptions and judgments (Vorstellungen und Urteile) which are associated
to the concept of that feeling. Therefore, e.g., „the feeling of hope cannot be
separated from the representation of a future happy state which we compare with
the present,” or „love cannot be thought without the representation of a beloved
person, without desire and striving after felicity,” etc.14 Without this conceptual,
cognitive apparatus, all that remains is an unspecific stirring, a general state of
well-being or distress, and the intensity and oscillations which are not specific
for the feeling (because different feelings can have the same intensity and
oscillations, and, also, the same feeling can vary in its intensity). It is not clear
how pure instrumental music could be able to convey or reproduce concepts
or representations, for they are not within the scope of music.15 Since the
specification of the feelings cannot be separated from their conceptual content,
and since music cannot reproduce (wiedergeben) concepts, Hanslick concludes
that music cannot represent specific feelings.16
The second argument states that the only aspect of feelings music is capable
of representing, since it is the aspect they both share, is the dynamic aspect, the
dynamic flow of experiencing a feeling. Music can imitate (nachbilden) only
the motion of a physical process, the characteristic way of motion. Motion is
something both music and feelings share, but it is only one aspect of feeling,
which, as said already, can be shared by different feelings, and also vary in one
feeling, since the same feeling does not always have the same dynamics. Hence,
dynamics cannot be specific for a feeling.17 Therefore, since the only aspect of
feelings which music can represent is not specific for any feeling, it follows that
music cannot represent specific feelings.
The argument I propose as the third one emphasizes that the ideas of
specific feelings cannot appear or be embodied in instrumental music because
between music and the text in a vocal composition is such that music alone
with its assets has the power only to enhance, revive, or colour the content of
the text. But what is represented in a vocal work is determined by the text, not
by the music.24 Hanslick claims that music is not determined enough so that
it could represent feelings in a determinant way, thus the same melody might
just as appropriately be played along some words with a very different, even
the opposite meaning. Hanslick substantiates this with a number of examples.
Namely, concerning Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Eurydice, a contemporary of
Gluck remarked that, in the Orpheus aria (which moved many of the listeners to
tears), „one could just as well or, indeed, much more faithfully set the opposite
words to the same tune” (that instead of „I lost my Eurydice,” the words say „I
found my Eurydice”).25 Hanslick himself remarks in addition to this that „music
certainly possesses far more specific tones for the expression of passionate
grief ”26 and emphasizes that he picked this example intentionally, first, because
Gluck „has been atributed the greatest exactitude in dramatic expression and,
second, because over the years so many people have admired in this melody the
feeling of intense grief which it expresses in conjunction with those words.”27
What was true for these smaller parts of musical works, Hanslick continues,
applies to the whole compositions as well. Many whole vocal compositions have
used different texts with the same music. Hanslick lists a number of examples:
ouverture to Mozart’s The Magic Flute is often performed as a vocal quartet
of quarrelsome Jewish shopkeepers, and Mozart’s music, with not a single
note altered, suits the low-comedy words surprisingly well; in many German
provincial churches sentimental love songs are performed during the celebration
of the Mass; in Italian churches, also, popular wordly tunes of Rossini, Bellini,
Donizetti and Verdi are played, and they do not at all disturb the devotions of
parishioners, but, on the contrary, inspire them even more; many of the most
famous pieces in Hendel’s Messiah, including the ones most admired for their
godly sentiments, are taken from the secular and mainly erotic duets which
Handel composed earlier; the madrigal-like pieces in J. S. Bach’s Christmas
Oratorio were transcribed from altogether dissimilar secular cantatas; Gluck,
who is considered to has achieved great dramatic truth in his music only by
fitting each note precisely to the specific situation, in Armida transcribed five
pieces from his earlier Italian operas.28 These examples lead Hanslick to conclude
that if music itself were capable of representing a specific feeling, say, devotion,
as its content, such a quid pro quo would be as impossible as if the preacher
could substitute his sermon with reciting a novel or a page of parliamentary
transactions.29
of feeling, yet immediately destroy the beauty of musical themes. This would be
impossible if the beauty consisted in the exactitude of expression of feelings.34
Therefore, we can make changes in one aspect without affecting the other.
The supposed thesis cannot explain this mismatch and Hanslick concludes
that we cannot identify the beauty in music with the exactitude of representation
of feelings. They are separate principles, since musical beauty demands an
autonomous content, whereas the representation subordinates the beauty to
non-musical factors.35 The principle of autonomous beauty and the principle of
representation any non-musical content are, therefore, two separate principles.
In addition, in recitative we have separately the principle of musical beauty and
the declamatory principle (adjusting the music to sound like speech), in opera
the well-known struggle between between the principle of dramatic realism and
that of musical beauty, just as in dance and ballet there is a struggle between
the dramatic principle and the principle of plastic and rhythmic beauty.36 In all
these art forms, we can see different principles and each of them has its own
demands, which go in different directions. By this Hanslick tries to sort out the
specifically musical (or formal) principle from all the other principles we might
equate it with. The musical principle is directed towards forming autonomous
musical beauty.
Hanslick further tries to explain what beauty in music really is and what it
consists of if not in representation or arousal of feelings. This constitutes the so-
called positive thesis.
34 See OMB, p. 26, OML, p. 81. At this point Hanslick speaks of representation and expression
interchangeably, because his focus is on showing the difference between musical and any
other non-musical principle (which involves both representation and expression of feelings).
35 See OMB, p. 22, OML, p. 76.
36 See OMB, p. 22–3, OML, p. 77–8.
37 See OMB, p. 27–8, OML, p. 81–3.
38 See OMB, p. 28, OML, p. 83–4.
122 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
39 See OMB, p. 28, OML, p. 83–4: “A musical idea turns up in the rough in the composer’s
imagination; it takes shape progressively, like a crystal, until imperceptibly the form of the
completed product stands before him in its main outlines.”
40 See OMB, p. 80, OML, p. 171: “But in music we see content and form, material and
configuration, image and idea, fused in an obscure, inseparable unity.” and “In music there is
no content as opposed to form, because music has no form other than the content.”
41 See OMB, p. 8, OML, p. 55, and OMB, p. 78, OML, p. 167. Also: Music says everything the
composer wanted to say – see OMB, p. 37–8, OML, p. 100.
42 „Der Inhalt der Musik sind tönend bewegte Formen“ – see OMB, p. 29, 101–2, OML, p.
84. The literal translation would be that the content of music are soundingly moving forms.
However, it should be noted that Hanslick consistently throughout the treatise uses the word
“ton” in the sense of tone, and not sound (for this he uses the term “Klang”), see OMB, p.
102. Therefore, soundingly is not an entirely adequate translation of Hanslick’s tönend, since
it omits the difference between a tone and a sound. Alternatively, the content of music could
be defined as “forms moved by the sounding of tones,” or, simply, as “tonally moving forms,”
which makes Payzant’s final choice.
43 OMB, p. 29, OML, p. 84: “(...) in fortwährender Selbstbildung vor unsern Augen entstehend.”
44 See OMB, p. 29, OML, p. 84–6.
Sanja Srećković: Eduard Hanslick’s formalism and his most infuential contemporary critics 123
and, second, concerning the artistic aspect and the art of shaping tone material,
as artistic value of embodied musical ideas, or externalized tone forms.
The first component – sensuous beauty of tone forms – is determined by
certain fundamental laws of nature, which govern the external manifestations of
sound and interrelations of all musical elements, and also the human organism
(e.g. which frequencies of sound we hear as pleasant, what we hear as harmony
and what as disharmony of tones etc.). These (negative, as Hanslick names them)
regularities, which are inherent in the tonal system due to the laws of nature,
are the basis for further capacity of tones for entering into the so-called positive
content of beauty, which in fact constitutes the artistic aspect of musical beauty.45
The realization of artistic ideas is achieved not through linking tones
mechanically into a series, but by spontaneous work of the composer upon the
tone material, the artistic structuring of tone relationships. The artistic value of
the ideas thus realized is the second component of musical beauty. Hanslick does
not give details about what exactly makes a composition artistically successful,
but only emphasizes that it always concerns the form of the composition.
Artistic ideas and artistic treatment of the material are immanent in the form:
tone structures we hear in music are realized artistic ideas themselves, and in
listening to the tones, we are able to follow the artistic acts of the composer,
which can be successful or unsuccessful, and thus we can evaluate them in terms
of their artistic value.46
Musical beauty, therefore, consists in the artistic value and acoustic beauty
of a formed (or, realized) tone idea.47 This dual definition of beauty is reflected
also in Hanslick’s claim that we notice musical beauty (it „makes itself known in
aesthetical awareness”) immediately, by itself, through the harmony of its parts,
and without reference to any factor external to the harmonious form of music,48
but, unlike contemplating the beauty of non-artistic objects, in listening to music
we do not stay on the surface of its sensuous aspect. Artistic beauty is designed by a
creative mind, and we, thus, in the structure of the composition and in the beauty
of that structure, consciously follow the ideas, or the artistic acts of its creator.49
45 See OMB, p. 30–1, OML, p. 88. Hanslick already noted that specifically musical beauty must
not be understood as simply acoustic beauty (which musical beauty often contains, but
cannot be reduced to), nor as an ear-pleasing play of tones, see OMB, p. 30, OML, p. 87. It
is clear that he does not take the term beautiful in the usual sense, and that by it Hanslick
understands not only the sensuous, but also the artistic aspect of music.
46 See OMB, p. 31, OML, p. 88–9.
47 Hanslick’s including of acoustical pleasure into his understanding of beauty is also evident
when he cites Grillparzer’s comments on the ugly, or unbeautiful, where he claims that, as
opposed to poetry, music cannot make use of the ugly in its works, since the impression of
music is received and enjoyed directly from sensation, so the understanding’s approval comes
too late to compensate for the intrusion of the ugly. “Hence Shakespeare can go all the way to
the hideous, but Mozart has to stay within the limits of the beautiful.” – See fn 18, OMB, p.
31, OML, p. 186.
48 See OMB, p. 32, OML, p. 90.
49 See OMB, p. 60, OML, p. 133–4: The second component, or the „ideal content,“ as
Hanslick says, can be understood only by the cultivated listeners, while the first component
is characteristic for the pleasure of the naive audience that exists in every art. Hanslick
124 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
misleading the listeners, who then would not be able to recognize the most
essential aspect of music – the music itself, or the art of shaping tone material.
Hence, Hanslick displaces emotions aside: we should focus on music, and not
the emotions, regardless of the way they relate to music. Contemporary authors,
on the other hand, emphasize the relation between music (regardless of how
it is defined) and the emotions, and consider the importance of emotions in
our reception of music. Contemporary authors do not notice that unspecific
emotional expressiveness of music is indeed compatible with the main intention
of Hanslick’s treatise. Here I shall end my interpretation of Hanslick’s view.
Further, I will expose the interpretations of the same treatise, made by several
most influential contemporary music aestheticians, and then try to demonstrate
why those interpretations should be refuted.
58 See Budd, op. cit, p. 20 Budd takes Hanslick’s musically beautiful to be equivalent to the value
of a musical piece.
59 Ibid, p. 21.
60 Ibid, p. 22.
61 Ibid, p. 21–4.
Sanja Srećković: Eduard Hanslick’s formalism and his most infuential contemporary critics 127
Hanslick as saying that as the words represent definite feelings more accurately, so
the music becomes less beautiful.64 This formulation does indeed avoid creating
a contradiction, but, unfortunately, does not make much sense either. Budd
actually does not notice that Hanslick does not speak about the degree to which
music succeeds in representing a feeling, but rather about the degree to which
music was tailored to representation, or adjusted so that it fits some non-musical
idea, and how much it was, on the other hand, composed only with musical
beauty in mind. I consider this to be inverse proportion Hanslick mentions. On
top of that, this was not even an argument that was supposed to prove anything,
but rather a passing comment about vocal pieces that were mostly dedicated to
the musical portrayal of feelings.65
The last argument for the same conclusion concerns the slight alterations
that can be made to the music in any song, which do not affect the accuracy of
the representation of feelings at all, but which destroy the beauty of the theme.
According to Budd, all that Hanslick intends is merely that the reference made
by the words of the song to the particular emotions will always remain, while the
overall beauty of the piece is affected. This does not succeed in supporting what
Budd takes to be Hanslick’s thesis: that the value of a composition never depends
on the representation of emotions by music.66 In my interpretation, on the other
hand, this actually is a successful argument, since it shows that it is possible that
the accuracy of musical expression of the content of the text – within the limits
of representing the dynamic aspect – remains the same, while the beauty of the
music is changed. This does support what I take to be Hanslick’s conclusion:
that musical beauty of a composition and the accuracy of representation (or,
as in this case, expression) are not the same thing. This interpretation not only
renders Hanslick’s argumentation far more sensible, but also accords more with
other Hanslick’s claims.67
Hanslick’s second conclusion concerns the arousal of emotions. According
to Budd’s interpretation, Hanslick here rejects the arousal of emotions as an
aesthetically relevant relation between music and emotions. Budd’s objection is
that Hanslick fails to recognize the distinction between the so-called musical and
extra-musical emotions, that is, the emotions which have the music as their object
(e.g. being impressed by a composition), and emotions which have an object
aside from music (e.g. being sad over some event while listening to music). Budd
considers it unnecessary to deny, as Hanslick does, that an extra-musical emotion
can be experienced in an aesthetic response to music in order to maintain the
doctrine of the specifically musical nature of the beauty of music.68 I believe
that here also Budd misses some Hanslick’s statements which clearly show that
he did recognize the existence of the so-called musical emotions.69 This is most
obvious in the chapter in which he explains the difference between an aesthetic
and non-aesthetic reception of music. Hanslick rejects as aesthetically irrelevant
only those emotions that are aroused in passive listening to music, during which
we do not focus on the music itself.70
Budd believes that the third way it might be thought that music can be
related to an emotion in an aesthetically significant manner is by music’s being
expressive of an emotion or by music’s possessing an emotional quality.71
Denying that describing music as proud, longing, etc. implies an aesthetically
relevant relation between music and the emotions is, according to Budd,
Hanslick’s third negative conclusion. Hanslick allegedly tries to defend this
conclusion by stating that descriptions of music that contain emotional terms are
either improper or deletable.72 Budd then explains why Hanslick is mistaken to
claim that emotional terms are deletable when they are used this way,73 and on
top of that stresses that it is unclear how this figurative use of words is supposed
to work, for the only analogy Hanslick allows between an emotion and a piece of
music is their dynamic features, and yet neither feature that Hanslick mentions
as an example is not a dynamic feature (longing, fresh, etc.).74 I take that the
mistake in Budd’s interpretation is in misunderstanding Hanslick’s statement
that, when we describe music, just as we use the terms concerning emotions,
68 See Budd, op. cit, p. 27, 30–1.
69 For example: “Far be it from us to want to underestimate the authority of feeling over music.
But this [aroused] feeling, which in fact to a greater or lesser degree unites itself with pure
contemplation, can only be regarded as artistic when it remains aware of its aesthetic origin,
i.e., the pleasure in just this one particular beauty. If this awareness is lacking, if there is no free
contemplation of the specifically musical beauty, and if feeling thinks of itself as only involved
in the natural power of tones, then, the more vigorously the impression makes its appearance,
all the less can art ascribe such impression to itself.” See OMB, p. 58, OML, p. 131–2.
70 According to Hanslick, the aesthetical significance of a response to music does not depend
on whether emotions are aroused, but rather on whether it involves active and aware
observing, perceiving of the specificities of the work, the awareness of the beauty of the work
and listening to the piece only for its own sake, or, on the contrary, passive enjoyment in the
general character of the piece, without noticing its specificities, as well as listening to the
piece for the sake of enjoying one’s own emotions that do not take music as their object –
OMB, p. 63–6, OML, p. 141–5.
71 See Budd, op. cit, p. 31.
72 Ibid, p. 32. By improper descriptions Budd means that their use involves an essential
reference to the emotions, and by deletable that they can be replaced by sets of terms drawn
from different realms, which would serve exactly the same purpose. These other sets are in
turn deletable in favour of purely musical, that is, literal, characterizations.
73 Ibid, p. 31–5.
74 Ibid, p. 31.
130 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
„we can also take our descriptions from other realms of appearance,” as meaning
that there is no special reason why, say, „sad” should be used to stand for some
property, since the term is no more appropriate than many other words.75 I
interpret the same sentence to mean that we generally describe music by using
terms concerning various realms of phenomena, and so that emotional terms
are simply not the only set of terms we use to describe music. According to my
interpretation, Hanslick does not take the descriptions which contain emotional
terms to be deletable, but rather believes that some descriptions of music can
contain terms concerning emotions, while others can contain terms concerning
weather conditions or some other realms of phenomena, and that descriptions
themselves do not imply some special relation between music and those
phenomena in any of the realms. Therefore, since emotional terms are not the
only set of terms we use to describe music, there is no reason to believe that the
mere fact that we describe music using emotional terms could imply that music is
in some aesthetically relevant relation only with emotions. My interpretation, as
opposed to Budd’s, not only renders this passage coherent with other Hanslick’s
statements, but also has more support in the text of the treatise.76
Another significant intepreter of Hanslick’s statements is Peter Kivy, who
considers Hanslick’s intentions so unclear that he dedicated a whole paper to
figuring out what Hanslick even tried to deny in his treatise. Kivy’s interpretation
is supposed, among other things, to patch up many apparent contradictions that
arise between the arguments of the negative thesis and the rest of the treatise.
Kivy states that there are three clearly discernible arguments that weave in and
out of Hanslick’s negative thesis (although, because of the vagaries of Hanslick’s
style, he allows the possibility of there being more arguments), and all three are
directed against the possibility of representation of emotions by music.77
The argument Kivy marks as the first one was, in my interpretation,
concerned with the justification for ascribing any particular emotional content
to an artwork. Kivy, however, names it „the argument from disagreement” and
presents it as follows: if music could represent emotions, there would be general
agreement on what, in any given instance, a piece or passage of music represents.
However, since, according to Hanslick, there is complete, chaotic disagreement,
music cannot sensibly be thought to represent emotions.78 Kivy refutes this
argument by claiming there is no such disagreement. Besides oversimplifying
this argument, Kivy fails to notice the already mentioned consequence of some
possible disagreement: that if any two listeners disagree on which emotion is
represented by a composition, the music itself does not provide a criterion
75 Ibid, p. 33.
76 See OMB, p. 32, OML, p. 90–1: “Feelings are thus, for the description of musical characteristics,
only one source among others which offer similarities. We may use such epithets to describe
music (indeed we cannot do without them), provided we never lose sight of the fact that we
are using them only figuratively and take care not to say such things as ‘This music portrays
arrogance,’ etc.”
77 See Peter Kivy, ‘What was Hanslick Denying’, The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1990),
pp. 3–18, p. 6. (in further text WWHD)
78 Ibid, p. 7.
Sanja Srećković: Eduard Hanslick’s formalism and his most infuential contemporary critics 131
for determining who of them is correct. Because there is nothing in the tones
themselves that would unambiguously point out to some definite emotion (in
Hanslick’s words, „there is no necessary connection”), there is nothing we can
use to justify the decision. Hanslick does not claim there is a „complete, chaotic
disagreement” on what is the content of musical compositions, but rather that
the issue of music’s emotional content would be much simpler and more evident
if music could represent definite emotions. I believe that this version of the
argument has more strength than Kivy’s version, and also puts forward a much
more interesting observation than it would if it was merely noting a statistical
fact about the agreement or disagreement of the listeners. On top of all this, my
version is supported by Hanslick’s explicit mentioning of justifying and refuting
attribution of emotional content to musical compositions.79
The second argument concerns the re-use of music by the composers to set
the texts of disparate emotive content or tone. Kivy presents it as an argument
trying to demonstrate that, since in those cases the disparity between the old
music and the new text is not perceived, it follows that music must be emotively
„neutral”.80 Kivy takes Hanslick’s statement that we can imagine a dramatically
effective melody which is supposed to express anger, but might also just as
effectively suit words expressing the exact opposite, say, passionate love, to mean
that every vigorous melody well suited to passionate anger is always well suited
(on the same account) to passionate love.81 I believe that this interpretation
oversimplifies the argument, and presents the conclusion incorrectly. It turns out
that, in Kivy’s version, Hanslick claims something that is clearly false (that music
is emotively neutral) and contradicts his own descriptions of music, and, on top
of that, uses the examples that quite obviously do not prove his point. In addition,
there are passages in the treatise which evidently show that for Hanslick music
can be more or less expressive of some emotions, but even when it is expressive to
a great extent, it is still insufficient for the achievement of one definite emotion.82
According to my interpretation, Hanslick characterizes music as emotively
indefinite, rather than neutral. This is the conclusion that he (successfully, I
believe) supports with examples of the same music suiting texts with a different
emotional content. Moreover, my version of the argument is coherent with
the rest of the treatise. This passage is related to Hanslick’s statement that
Gluck could have chosen tones more specific for the expression of passionate
grief for Orpheus’ aria.83 Kivy dedicates another paper to the clarification of
this statement, since it does not fit his interpretation of Hanslick’s view on the
expressiveness of music.84 In this paper, Kivy tries in many ways, but with no
success, to fit this statement with the rest of his interpretation of Hanslick’s view,
and ends by concluding that Hanslick was simply being incoherent.85 I believe
that this reaffirms that Hanslick’s view is not only more coherent, but also easier
to understand in my interpretation.86
The third argument is the already presented argument concerning the
conceptual content of emotions. In Kivy’s version, this argument demonstrates
the impossibility of musical representation of emotions based on what
emotions are and how they are ordinarily aroused. After noting that a good
deal of Hanslick’s view on emotions is „murky,” Kivy supposes that Hanslick
probably wanted to say that, since music cannot represent in sufficient detail
the situations in which emotions are normally aroused, it cannot be thought
to represent emotions. To this Kivy objects that the two claims clearly are not
equivalent.87 Kivy’s interpretation not only renders this argument unclear and
quite bad, it is also not supported by the text of the treatise. When speaking
of the conceptual content, Hanslick does not mention the situations in which
emotions are aroused, but rather the conceptions and thoughts which appear in
association with the emotion, during the occurrence of the emotion, although
Hanslick adds that they can appear also unconsciously. Because of the latter, I
am inclined to take the conceptual content as also the conceptions and thoughts
we ordinarily associate with the concept of an emotion.88 Thus, according to
my interpretation, the conceptual content is not the situation which arouses the
emotion, nor is it necessarily in the consciousness of the person undergoing the
emotion, but rather it is something we are inclined to associate with the emotion,
or with the concept of that emotion. Jenefer Robinson, as well as Kivy, interprets
this argument with the emphasis on the theory of emotions, especially on the
84 See Peter Kivy, ‘Something I’ve Always Wanted to Know About Hanslick’, Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism 46 (1988), p. 413–17.
85 Ibid, p. 416–7.
86 In order to show that this argument indeed succeeds in demonstrating the so-called emotive
indefiniteness, I want to add that Hanslick emphasizes that he selected this example out
of many, “first, because it concerns the composer – Gluck – to whom has been attributed
the greatest exactitude in dramatic expression and, second, because over the years so
many people have admired in this melody the feeling of intense grief which it expresses
in conjunction with those words.” It is clear from this that the melody which would much
more suit the expression of one emotion was evidently very successful for the expression of
another, completely different emotion – see OMB, p. 18, OML, p. 69.
87 Kivy, WWHD, p. 9–10.
88 Hanslick did not explicitly formulate the statement that conceptual content is not solely a
part in the experience of emotion, but also the content we are usually inclined to associate
with the concept of the emotion. However, I believe that this statement can still be ascribed
to him, since it renders his argumentation more coherent, which I will substantiate further in
the paper.
For the passage that goes against Kivy’s interpretation, see OMB, p. 9–10, OML, p. 57–8:
“Only on the basis of a number of ideas and judgements (perhaps unconsciously at moments
of strong feeling) can our state of mind congeal (verdichten) into this or that specific feeling.”
Sanja Srećković: Eduard Hanslick’s formalism and his most infuential contemporary critics 133
89 See Jenefer Robinson, Deeper than Reason, Oxford NY, 2005, str. 295.
90 Ibid, p. 3, 7–8. These surveys have, according to Robinson, showed that emotions are
processes in which a special kind of affective appraisal induces characteristic physiological
and behavioral changes, and only afterwards is this succeeded by the so-called “cognitive
monitoring” of the situation.
91 Ibid, p. 462, fn 7.
92 Therefore, instead of redefining the emotions (since this may leave the assumptions of the
argument untouched), one should rather try to refute this argument by showing there is
something besides the conceptual content that can be determinant for a particular emotion
(that music can convey), that is, by finding some other criterion for distinguishing emotions.
93 See Davies, op. cit, p. 209.
94 Ibid, see p. 152–3. for the argument on eliminability of the descriptions of music involving
emotion related terms (taken over from Budd); p. 203–208. for the argument on the relation
between music and text (taken from Budd and Kivy); 209–221. for the main argument
about the conceptual content (taken from Budd); p. 246–9. for the so-called argument from
disagreement (taken from Kivy); p. 281–283. and 289–291. for the interpretation of Hanslick’s
view on the arousal of emotions (taken from Kivy).
134 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
book at least indicates the acceptance and the influence of the interpretations
presented in this paper.
Conclusion
I hope, first of all, that in this paper I succeeded in presenting a clear
reconstruction of Hanslick’s view on music – a reconstruction that renders his
statements comprehensible and coherent, and thus in presenting Hanslick as a far
better philosopher than contemporary interpreters give him credit for. Moreover,
this would justify his role in the history of aesthetics in terms of philosophical
significance, and not solely due to the fact that no one has hitherto had a serious
approach to the aesthetics of music.
Due to the space limit, I was not able to expose all the details of contemporary
author’s interpretations of Hanslick’s view. Nevertheless, I consider the material
presented in this paper substantiated and sufficient for showing that it is not
the fact that these interpretations contain some minor misunderstandings, but
it is rather the whole argumentation that is misinterpreted. On the one hand,
this renders their rejection of Hanslick’s argumentation understandable, but, on
the other hand, it indicates the possible need for a reconsideration of the same
arguments, that is, the version of the arguments in which they are substantiated
and coherent with each other.
I hope as well that I succeeded in the main intention of this paper, namely,
to demonstrate that contemporary aesthetics of music (more precisely, the part
of it that deals with the relation between music and the emotions) rests on the
misinterpretation of Hanslick’s statements, which should have an impact on the
alleged refutations of those statements, and also on the soundness of the theories
that count on the incorrectness of Hanslick’s argumentation.
References:
Malcolm Budd, Music and the Emotions: The Philosophical Theories, London, 1985.
Eduard Hanslick, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, 13–15. Auflage, Leipzig, 1922.
Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, trans. Geoffrey Payzant,
Indianapolis, 1986.
Eduard Hanslik, O muzički lijepom, pr. Ivan Foht, BIGZ, 1977.
Stephen Davies, Musical Meaning and Expression, Ithaca NY, 1994.
Peter Kivy, ‘Something I’ve Always Wanted to Know About Hanslick’, Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1988), 413–17.
Peter Kivy, ‘What was Hanslick Denying’, The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 8, No.
1 (1990), pp. 3–18.
Jenefer Robinson, Deeper than Reason, Oxford NY, 2005.
Ludwig Wittgentstein, Philosophical investigations, Basil Blackwell Ltd 1958.
Ljiljana Radenović Original Scientific Paper
University of Belgrade UDK 165.242
165 Витгенштајн Л.
Even though it might appear that the problem of other minds raises the
question about the nature of our psychosocial strategies for making sense of
other people, their thoughts, feelings, and actions, this is not its focal point.
Philosophers have not typically been inquisitive about strategies that help us
realize, for instance, that a friend of ours is depressed or how often we get it right
when we speculate about what she thinks. The philosophical problem of other
minds runs deeper than this. This problem is about how I know if there were
other minds like mine at all and how I could justify such knowledge. In other
words, it is not simply about how I can know what other people think but about
how I can know if they think. This radical question that opens up an equally
radical gap between others and me is what is considered to be the traditional
philosophical problem of other minds. Formulated in this way the question of
other minds appears to be a textbook example of an epistemological question: it
is the question about the nature and justification of our knowledge.2 But, given
its radical nature, we might ask how did philosophers end up questioning the
existence of other minds on such fundamental level? Where and how does this
problem occur?
The philosophical problem of other minds is often described as a problem
that arises from the asymmetry between the way we get to know our own mental
states and the way we get to know that other people have similar states. While it
seems that we know ourselves directly, our knowledge of others (if we have such
knowledge) is indirect. The problem is often traced back to Descartes’ philosophy
while a variety of solutions have been proposed since then. Two major opposing
philosophical camps have emerged. On one hand, there are philosophers who
do accept this asymmetry of knowledge. Their goal is to show that despite the
fact that we cannot reach other people’s minds directly we do have enough
inductive evidence to know that they do have minds (see e.g. Mill 1872, Russell
1970, Hampshire 1970). On the other hand, philosophers working within the
Wittgensteinian tradition (such as e.g. Malcolm 1958, Hacker 1972) tend to
reject such asymmetry altogether arguing that the nature of our knowledge of
other minds as well as the evidence we have for it is not based on empirical
evidence at all. The crux of their argument is that the relationship between
our minds and our behavior is not causal and contingent (i.e. empirical in any
way) but conceptual. Thus, our knowledge of other people, their thoughts and
feelings, depends on our knowledge of the meaning of mental concepts such as
pain, joy and the like along with our estimate of whether people’s behavior fulfils
the criteria for being in pain or feeling happy. When these criteria are fulfilled
there is no space left for any doubt about the existence of their minds.
My goal in this paper is to examine one version of the Wittgensteinian
approach to the problem of other minds proposed by M.R.M. ter Hark (1991).
Hyslop (1995) refers to it as the Wittgensteinian attitudinal approach while making
cautionary note that this might not be the solution that Wittgenstein himself
had in mind. Nevertheless, the approach is Wittgensteinian as it starts with the
assumption that there is no asymmetry between self knowledge and knowledge of
others as well as that the relation between our inner states and outer behavior is a
2 Whether the problem is merely epistemological or comes with the whole package of
ontological assumptions has been debated on many occasions. For the review see e.g.
Avramides (2001).
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 137
criteria for being in pain this serves as justification of our belief that they are
indeed in pain. However, this justification does not come from inductive
inference nor does it consist of gathering empirical evidence of any sort as the
relation between inner states and outer behavior is not causal but conceptual. So,
there is no need to worry about the inductive base that is too small nor about
the way we make intuitive connection between inner and outer (or the way we
generalize such knowledge to others) as we do not make such connection at all.
We know what other people feel because we know the meaning of the words
and since we know the meaning of the words we see their pain in their behavior.
Thus, when other people pass the criteria for being in pain then we can conclude
that they are indeed in pain without worrying about skeptical objections.
The Wittgensteinian approach I presented here is what is usually called
the criterial approach to other minds. Now, let me turn and see how it differs
from the other version of the Wittgensteinian approach, namely the attitudinal
approach. My plan is to clarify and defend the latter in the following sections.
While the criterial and the attitudinal approach share the assumptions related
to the inner/outer connection and the nature of self-knowledge the major
difference between the two lies in the way they conceptualize our knowledge
of others. What they have on common is as follows: a) the relationship between
our inner states and outer behavior is not external, causal, and contingent; b)
our awareness of how we feel or what we think does not constitute theoretical
or intuitive knowledge. It is neither indirect nor direct. However, within the
criterial approach our knowledge of others comes in the form of beliefs while
in the attitudinal approach the knowledge of others is not a set of beliefs at all6.
Given that the crietrial approach presupposes that we do indeed have beliefs
about other people’s minds (e.g. that somebody is in pain, or is happy, or believes
in gender equality) the question that the skeptic asks is whether we can justify
such beliefs? According to the criterial approach this justification does not come
from induction as the relation between inner life and behavior is not empirical.
However, justification does not and cannot come in the form of logical entailment
either as the relationship between the two is not strictly speaking logical. If the
connection were logical the inner feelings would entail outer manifestations. We
are all aware that this is not the case. People are able to hide or fake their pains.
There is no logical entailment between the two. As Hyslop correctly points out,
the standard criterial approach is meant to find a ‘midway between entailment
and induction’ to justify our knowledge of other minds. In a nutshell, the goal
of the criterial approach is to defend our knowledge about other minds within
the framework of standard folk psychology7. This basically means that such
approach presupposes that our knowledge of others comes in the form of beliefs.
6 As we will shortly see when I turn the developmental issues (development of mind, social
cognition, language) these two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive. However,
the research in developmental psychology indicates that the attitudinal approach to other
minds develops first and serves as the basis for language development within which the
cirterial approach to other minds makes sense.
7 ‘Folk psychology’ is the term used in many different ways in cognitive science and philosophy
of mind (for the review see e.g. Clarke 2001). However, when philosophers and cognitive
scientists talk about folk psychology they usually presuppose that folk psychology must
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 141
include human ability to form beliefs about beliefs of others, i.e. it must involve human ability
to ascribe beliefs to others in order to explain and predict their behavior.
8 I am grateful to the reviewer of this paper for the suggestion that the fulfillment of the criteria
could be ‘ceteris paribus’ or defeasible by other factors (such as the context). This would give us
something less than entailment but such fulfillment of the criteria would be categorically different
from induction. However, no matter how we clarify the status of the conceptual justification it
seems that the skeptical worry will not go away unless we have the certainty of logical entailment.
So, the question would still remain: can we overcome this worry and win against the skeptic even
if we successfully defend the independent status of conceptual justification?
142 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
by saying that: „Something perhaps deeper than knowledge applies in one’s own
case, something prelinguistic even.” (1995, p. 124). As for other people and their
minds Hyslop says that our knowledge of them is rather a form of an attitude
(also probably paralinguistic) that already involves treating others as minds
never as mere bodies. When Hyslop insists that we are aware of ourselves on a
deeper, prelinguistic level and that we have the approach to others that already
presupposes their minds he wants to differentiate linguistic knowledge that
usually comes in the form of propositions, propositional attitudes, shortly in the
form of beliefs from immediacy of self-awareness and our strong intuition that
other people indeed think and feel. The latter point is in a sense a step beyond
the Wittgensteinian point that inner life is conceptually related to outer behavior.
We should think of it as a prelinguistic intuition which tells us that others are
persons with their thoughts, feelings, and intentions. So, when we say that we
see mind in other people’s behavior this ‘seeing’ of the mind is happening on the
basic perceptual level and does not come out from some semantic knowledge
of the meaning of the words. It would follow then that the mental concepts
and their meanings as well as Wittgensteinian thesis that the relations between
behavior and inner life is conceptual have their roots in something more basic.
In other words, the attitudinal approach presupposes something stronger then
conceptual relation between inner and outer as it has roots in prelinguistic not
linguistic practices. Moreover, as we will see shortly these prelinguistic practices
are developmental prerequisite for normal language development. This means
that the conceptual relation between inner and outer emerges from paralinguistic
practices that we are engaged in. In the next section I will say more about this.
When we think about the phenomenology of our everyday experience
it seems that there is nothing problematic so far about the main theses of the
attitudinal approach. When we see someone fall down there is this immediacy
of being aware that they are in pain (even though we do not feel it) in the same
way there is the immediacy of feeling our own pain. There seems to be no in
between steps of introspection or inference in any of these cases. This immediacy
allows us to be certain about ourselves and others. According to the attitudinal
approach, this certainty does not come in the form of justified belief or belief at
all. But, the question still lingers: what is this attitudinal approach exactly and
how does such attitude give us such certainty? In the following section I will
examine whether we can clarify what this exactly means, what the attitudinal
approach involves, and what it implies. In order to do this I am going to use
some findings and insights that are coming from developmental science.
that we have good or not so good reasons for holding such beliefs. To argue
that our knowledge of others does not even come in the form of beliefs seems
strange. Even if at the first glance such position appears to be promising in the
fight against skeptical worries it still seems to be raising more questions than it
promises to solve.
What is this attitude after all? What is its nature and how are we to think
about it? So far we only know what this attitude is not: it is not a belief and
it should be psychologically and epistemologically deeper than belief. It is
supposed to allow us to have the immediacy of knowing that others are in pain
without us having to do any inferring. However, in many cases it does seem that
we are engaged in a reasoning process trying to figure out how people really feel
and what they think. We use all sorts of strategies and all kinds of evidence to
come to the conclusion about their inner states. This kind of reasoning seems
to suggest that our knowledge of others does indeed come in the form of belief
and requires justification. The required justification could be only obtained
through induction or logical entailment. This brings us back to the dilemmas
and problems that both criterial and analogical approaches have faced.
Indeed, this brief and very general analysis of our everyday musings about
other people’s inner lives does not necessarily imply that we need to give up the
attitudinal approach altogether. However, in order to hold on to it we need to
specify more closely what exactly this attitudinal approach is. Furthermore, in
order to convince anybody to embrace such an approach we need to explain
why it seems that we do form beliefs about other people’s minds and why we
do search for evidence for the beliefs we have formed. That is, we need to show
how our everyday practices of forming and justifying beliefs emerge from the
attitudinal, prelinguistic knowledge.
In order to do this we need to step back from our everyday practices and
look at how such practices develop. More specifically, we need to take a look
at the development of social cognition. This is not something philosophers like
to do but it is nonetheless of crucial importance for this particular problem.
In the rest of this section I will try to outline the origins of this prelinguistic
attitude toward others as well as to show how our beliefs about others emerge
from prelinguistic knowledge that children develop throughout the first years
of life. I hope that this developmental journey will clarify in what way such
specific attitude toward others represents the foundation for more sophisticated
linguistic forms of social cognition.
Let us first see at what age children begin to understand that other people
have beliefs of their own and how people form such beliefs. Back in 1983 Heinz
Wimmer and Josef Perner developed a test that was meant to answer these
questions. This test is now known as false beliefs test. In the test children are
presented with the following story: Maxi places some chocolate in a cupboard in
the kitchen and leaves the room. While Maxi is away, another character takes the
chocolate from the first cupboard and puts it in the second cupboard, and then
leaves. When Maxi returns, the child is asked to predict where Maxi will look
for the chocolate. The correct answer, of course, is that Maxi will look for the
144 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
chocolate in the first cupboard because we know that Maxi could not know that
the chocolate was moved to another drawer. This experiment has shown that
children of four years and older do understand what Maxi can and cannot know
about this situation. Younger children do not have this understanding as yet and
cannot answer the questions about Maxi’s beliefs properly. Instead they tend to
apply what they know, i.e. their own beliefs, to Maxi.
However, even before children develop the ability to correctly attribute
beliefs to others they do engage in social interaction and show basic ability to
interpret other peoples’ intentions. It is not surprising that such ability starts very
early, during the first year of child’s life, even before language kicks in. I will trace
back and outline these prelinguistic origins of social cognition in the attempt
to show how this prelinguistic attitude toward others as intentional beings
(rather than mere objects) emerges. As we will see shortly the development of
social cognition in infants is the single most important predictor of successful
language acquisition. In the case that this development is derailed the language
development is derailed too. The case of children with autism illustrates well the
connection between prelinguistic social cognition and language development. I
will come back to this to this point at the end of this section.
The world in which the child is born is intrinsically social as the child needs
a caregiver if she is to survive. The caregiver needs to be there for the child not
only to feed her but to regulate her arousal states so that the child gets enough
sleep as well as enough external stimuli that are necessary for normal physical
and psychological development (see e.g. Shanker 2013). The child at birth does
not have the required regulatory systems in place so the caregiver serves as a
sort of the external regulating brain (Tantam 2009) to a child. If the child is to
be successful and develop quickly the child needs to be able to tune in and read
social cues coming from the caregiver. The better the child is in this non verbal
communication the better the development of her self-regulatory, cognitive,
affective systems will be. So, the first precursors of nonverbal communication
start at birth.
However, the most important step in development of such communication
is marked by the emergence of joint attention when the child is approximately
nine months old. Joint attention refers to the ability to „coordinate attention
between interactive social partners with respect to objects or events in order
to share awareness of the objects and events” (Mundy et al. 1986, p. 657). It is
important to note that the child who is able to engage in joint attention is able
to make use of the caregiver’s communicative signals. In other words, through
preverbal communicative signals, the child and the caregiver are able to follow
and direct each other’s attention. The clear sign that the child is able to make use
of the communicative signals of a caregiver can be seen in her ability to follow
the gaze of the caregiver and determine the object(s) to which the caregiver
intends her to attend.
It is very likely that the nature and the development of these preverbal
signals highly depend on the child’s tendency to attend to and make sense of
the caregiver’s emotional expressions. For one thing, being preverbal, these
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 145
9 Given that the emergence of social orienting and attention to distress occurs long before the
child acquires conventional communicative gestures, it would be worthwhile to explore how
the former relate to the latter and whether the origins of communicative gestures lie in the
more basic understanding of emotional expressions.
10 It is not surprising that language acquisition is a crucial factor in category development,
concept acquisition, and the development of abstract thought. It has been shown that
language acquisition shapes the development of concept acquisition and category formation
(see. e.g. Markman 1989), and contributes in an important way to flexibility in categorization
tasks (see e.g. Ellis & Oakes 2006). In other words, once language kicks in, along with the
child’s ability to communicate linguistically, language is the main medium of social learning
and, as such, is the driving force behind category development and concept acquisition which
includes the acquisition of mental concepts such as pain and happiness and more abstract
mental concepts such as beliefs and desires.
146 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
delay in joint attention is followed by the delay of language acquisition and the
further impaired development of social cognition in these children. So, in a way
the prelinguistic understanding of others as minds with their own intentions is
the foundations of language acquisition and as such represents the single key to
the development of abstract thought that allows us to think about our own and
other people’s beliefs.
We can now pose a further question and ask what the origins of joint
attention are. In the literature, there are two general ways of explaining normal
development of joint attention. According to one approach, joint attention in
normally developing children is explained by emotional interaction with their
caregivers. As a result of normal emotional interaction they develop normal
intersubjective relations (Hobson 1993) and engage in normal socio-emotional
development (Mundy 1995). According to this approach, children with normal
socio-emotional development exhibit normal face-to-face gaze, direction of
attention, and appropriate patterning of behavior within interactions. All of the
above enables them to participate in joint attentional scenes. According to the
other approach, the origin of joint attention is primarily cognitive. Instead of
looking into socio-emotional development, the proponents of this view hold that
children develop their understanding of the caregiver’s attention to an object.
More precisely, children develop the ability to represent the relation between
caregiver and the object to which the caregiver is attending (Baron-Cohen 1995;
Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith 1985).
However, stated in the most general terms, the two approaches provide only
a starting point for further research. Both views, if they are to be useful, need
further refinement. The goal of the subsequent research is to determine, for
example, in what way socio-emotional development brings about joint attention
and/or what underlying mechanisms enable the child to develop proper
understanding of the caregiver’s attention.
It is not surprising that the main goal of the recent, more refined theories of
the origins of joint attention is to identify the mechanisms responsible for, and
the early precursors of the development of joint attention. Nor is it surprising
that these theories do not pose the question of whether the impairment in
joint attention is essentially affective or cognitive. Once we start identifying the
underlying mechanisms for development of joint attention it appears that such
development has links to all three areas of development: affective, cognitive, and
sensory development.
In the more recent theories, then, a common strategy for explaining the
origins of joint attention is to identify its precursors and explain how they
emerge in development. For instance, social orienting is usually taken to be
one of the main precursors of joint attention (for a comprehensive review, see
Dawson et al. 2004). Social orienting refers to children’s ability to „spontaneously
orient to naturally occurring social stimuli in their environment” (Dawson et
al. 2004, p. 272). Usually, children who have difficulties with social orienting,
such as children with autism, also have difficulties with joint attention (Mundy
& Neal 2001). Thus, it has been argued that if the child fails to orient to social
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 147
stimuli, that is, if she fails to show appropriate attraction to people, particularly
to the sounds and features of their faces, this will necessarily impair her ability to
engage in joint attentional scenes (Dawson, Meltzoff, Osterling, Rinaldi & Brown
1998; Mundy & Neal, 2001).
The next question is what underlies the child’s ability to orient to social
stimuli successfully. Here, several theories have been proposed. In some instances,
the social orienting is treated as a special case of a more general attentional
functioning (e.g. Bryson, Wainwright-Sharp, & Smith 1990; Courchesne et al.
1994; Dawson & Lewy 1989a, 1989b). There are disagreements about the exact
nature of this special case. According to Courchesne, Chisum, and Townsend
(1995), early social exchanges are quite demanding and require rapid attentional
shifts between different stimuli. In their view, this is exactly what children need
to be able to do if they are to orient spontaneously to social stimuli. Others argue
that the ability to shift attention is not of crucial importance; rather, the very
nature of social stimuli is very complex and requires parallel processing (i.e.
the processing of facial expression, speech, gestures, and the like at the same
time). All of the above seems to be impaired in children with autism. One way to
explain normal processing abilities is by turning to the proper connectivity of the
brain regions. If such connectivity fails to develop the result might be impaired
social orienting, joint attention, language acquisition or in a nutshell the result
could be the onset of autistic spectrum disorder (Just, Cherkassky, Keller, &
Minshew 2004). Furthermore, there are authors who argue that children need to
have a motivational neurological mechanism that assigns a reward value to social
contact if they are to be drawn to social stimuli at all (Mundy 1995; Panskepp
1987). They also argue that this is exactly what children with autism do not have.
It is important to notice that these theories are not mutually exclusive. It
might turn out that the connectivity of brain regions which enables normal
processing as well as a reward mechanism are in play and jointly contribute to
the normal development of social orienting and the processing of emotional
expressions, which together lead to joint attention in children.
Recent studies have shown that typically-developing children first come to
recognize emotional expressions by relying on intersensory perceptions. Later, they
are able to focus on voice or facial expression and to extract emotional meaning
from them alone (Walker-Andrews 1997). What this means is that the ability to
recognize certain expressions depends on the proper integration of stimuli coming
through vision, sound, and touch. Consequently, if the sensory channels do not
work properly, the child will not be able to recognize emotional expressions,
which will thus compromise her ability to grasp the emotional meanings of these
expressions. This also might compromise the development of the neuro-affective
motivation system (reward system) which, in turn, will compromise the child’s
interest in engaging in social interaction, thereby further derailing her social
development. Of course, the causal chain can go in the opposite direction: it
might turn out that the neuro-affective motivation system in the brain allows the
child to enter social interactions, leading to normal brain development and the
connectivity of brain regions. It is important to determine what exactly this causal
chain looks like, and further research in this area would be invaluable.
148 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
However, even the empirical findings collected so far point to a very interesting
fact, namely that the child begins to understand emotional expressions and what
they mean far before the child learns language. So, here is the first conclusion we
can make that might contribute to better understanding of the Wittgensteinian
attitudinal approach. It seems that in the first year of a child’s life we can find
the foundation for what is going to become the conceptual link between inner
mental life and outer behavior that some Wittgensteinians have been looking for.
More specifically, empirical findings have shown that if the child is to engage in
joint attentional scenes the child needs to be able to decipher what it means when
mom smiles or when she frowns. Furthermore, if the child is to learn language she
needs to participate in joint attentional scenes. Given that the whole of language
acquisition depends on this preverbal emotional communication we are safe to
assume that the acquisition of mental concepts, the acquisition of the meanings
of such concepts is in fact closely tied to these prelinguistic, nonverbal exchanges.
When the child starts using mental concepts, such as „It hurts’ or ‘I am happy’,
the child starts using them in order to express what she feels. Once language kicks
in the child will not rely on preverbal signals (only) to let others know how she
feels. Moreover, we have seen that in preverbal communication mom’s smile is
her happiness while her frown is disapproval. This is what the child immediately
knows and responds to before she learns language. So, when the child learns
mental concepts this internal connection between smile and joy, or frown and
disapproval is kept. Wittgenstein called this internal connection conceptual. We
can now see that its origins lie in preverbal communication.
Finally, when children develop language they develop the ability to think
about what they think and feel. With language they also develop the ability and
the need to make sense of why we think and feel the way we do. This applies to
their own case as well as the case of others. So, by the time they are four, children
begin to understand what you need to see in order to form a particular belief
and as a result they can pass the false belief test. With language development
they also become aware that there are cases when people lie and start to search
for the indicators that they are (not) lying or pretending in a particular case.
In other words, they start to search for the evidence that their beliefs about
other people’s mental states are correct. But, it is important to notice that this
comes much later when language and abstract capacities are fairly developed.
It is also important to remember that these abilities grow out of immediacy of
preverbal communication where possibility of lying and faking is yet to emerge.
It is interesting to note that Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations
convincingly expressed similar view: „249. Are we perhaps over-hasty in our
assumption that the smile of an unweaned infant is not a pretence?–And on what
experience is our assumption based? (Lying is a language-game that needs to be
learned like any other one.)” (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, p. 90).
All of the aforementioned insights are of crucial importance for
understanding both the developmental origins of the attitudinal approach as
well as how we become perplexed with the questions what other people feel and
whether they really feel what we think they do. But this worry that others might
lie or pretend does not arise prior to language acquisition nor are we worried
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 149
about it in most of our encounters with other people. Even when we start
suspecting that somebody is lying we deal with this particular case separately
from the ordinary cases when we clearly see in other people’s faces or hear in
their words how they feel. The ordinary cases are in a sense a normal background
for thinking about others. As Hyslop correctly notices, to wonder if somebody
is lying or pretending is not the same as questioning that they are persons at all.
However, if we are philosophers it seems to us that we can radicalize and
generalize these exemptions: namely, it seems to us that we can imagine not only
that all people are lying or pretending all the time but also that they don’t have
any feelings and thoughts whatsoever. In other words, it seems to us that we
can conceive of a situation in which other people behave exactly the way we do
but that they have no feelings or thoughts inside at all: i.e. that they are nothing
but machines. Once we radicalize problem in this way we start searching for
some absolute and secure evidence for the existence of other minds. Let me
phrase this in developmental terms. Even though the minds of others seemed
to be fairly unproblematic to a child before she learns language once she learns
language she is equipped to ask all sorts of questions about them including the
very skeptical ones. But, this very possibility tells us more about the nature of
our language than about the nature of other minds. That is, our language is
such that we can make all sorts of distinctions and abstractions the way it suits
us. We can categorize things in many ways and we can also change the rules of
categorization as we go. We can make all sorts of arbitrary distinctions if they are
useful in specific contexts or we can make them just for the fun of it. This is a
precious feature of our language that allows us to investigate nature, be flexible,
adapt well, predict the future, and think about the past. However, it also allows
us to make distinctions such as the one between the inner mental life and the
outer behavior. However, when we take a look at a child’s development the first
thing we notice is that there is no trace of such distinction in our developmental
trajectory. On the contrary, everything that the child does before she learns
language and long after she learns language goes against the assumption that
such distinction makes sense at all.
However, even if this developmental story, that I’ve just told, is sufficiently
convincing to make us embrace the internal, conceptual link between our inner
feelings and behavioral expressions of these feelings there is still one more
question we need to tackle. That is, we still need to see if the Wittgensteinian
attitudinal approach backed with the developmental psychology is sufficient to
dissolve skeptical worries. Let me, now, turn to this question.
children even before they learn language, always treat their caregivers and peers
as bodies with minds never as mere bodies. Furthermore, in the previous section I
have also tried to outline how language and concept acquisition emerge from this
attitude toward others. However, we can now ask if this psychological primacy is
sufficient for the successful fight against philosophical skeptic. Hyslop thinks that
it is not. So, let’s go over his worries first and see whether he has a point.
The first question to ask is where the certainty in the existence of other
people’s minds (within the attitudinal approach) comes from. Hyslop argues
that our certainty comes from the fact that we already think of other people’s
behavior as expressing sensation. „We view the behaviour, regard it, apprehend
it, understand it, conceptualize it, see it, as expressive of sensation. That is,
supposedly, why we are certain.” (Hyslop 1995, p.128) As Hyslop goes on to argue
this is probably our normal psychological response to other people. However,
the problem arises when we start invoking regular psychological processes,
mechanisms, and attitudes in order to justify our certainty. Indeed, identified
psychological processes do explain why we feel certain that other people have
minds but they do not justify such certainty. In other words, no matter how
certain we might be about something this still does not mean that that something
is really the case.
Hyslop uses several examples to illustrate how our psychological certainty
can lead us astray. The cases of sexism and racism first come to mind. We all know
that in the patriarchal society women are considered to be inferior. However, this
attitude toward women does not remain on the level of beliefs and thoughts. It
runs deeper. Women are, in fact, perceived as inferior. The inferiority appears on
the observational level. What this means is that when a man sees a woman there
is no need for him to infer that she is inferior. He perceives her like that. A man
does not need to go and look for the inductive nor deductive evidence (he could
if he was challenged to do so). Sexism is very often entrenched in the way people
see the world not just the way they think about the world. The same applies to
racism.
What is striking is that sexists or racists do seem to be certain about their
conception of women or other races and they seem to have the attitude toward
women or other races that is deeper than a theory or a system of beliefs. „For
them the conception is simply of reality. It is completely on a par with seeing a
painting as a painting. It is immediate. It is there, right in front of them, perceived
as such.” (Hyslop 1995, p. 129). Hyslop goes on to illustrate the similarities
between the attitudinal approach to other minds and these other conceptions
that people might develop:
It is not that those with the conception that, say, women’s bodies are for the
delectation of men, are other than misleadingly said to believe this. If they are
thought to believe this the belief will be thought to arise from the conception. The
conception is prior to, and deeper than belief. There is no gap in the conception,
between outer and inner. A woman’s body is seen as for the delectation of men,
that is how they are perceived. That is the immediate experience, as immediate as
in the case of the painting. (Hyslop 1995, p. 129)
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 151
their language remains rigid, their concepts and categories are inflexible (see e.g.
Plaisted 2000, 2001) and their ability to read other people’s minds remains poor.
However, less known but very interesting finding is that inner life along with self
consciousness in these children seems to be impoverished too. Or, as Currathers
(1996) put it, children and individuals with autism do not only have impaired
ability to ascribe beliefs and desires to others but also lack the ability to ascribe
beliefs and desires to themselves. This means that their mind-blindness goes
hand in hand with their lack of self knowledge. Baron-Cohen (1989) found that
autistic subjects find it difficult to remember their own recent false beliefs. They
also seem to have trouble drawing the appearance-reality distinction. If they
don’t have the concept of belief and desire, i.e. if they do not understand that it
is one thing believing that something is the case and yet another that something
is the case they would certainly have difficulty understanding the difference
between their experience and what that experience is of (the reality). Similarly,
Hurlbert et al (1994) found that individuals with Asperger syndrome find it hard
to report their inner experiences. Even those who could pass advanced false
belief tests did not report any inner verbalisation, unsymbolised thinking and
emotional feelings. They only reported visual images. The ones who could not
pass advanced false belief tests did not report any inner experiences at all. These
are indeed striking findings as they indicate that impaired social cognition seems
to be related to impaired self-awareness and impoverished inner mental life.
This means that social cognition and inner mental life are both being constituted
simultaneously through social interaction and preverbal communication during
the first year of child’s life.
The aforementioned cases of children with autism yet again illustrate the
psychological primacy of our attitude toward others over any other conceptions
about others that we might adopt later. It is in fact so important for normal
development that children without it lack a diverse mental life and have
substantially impaired self knowledge. Now, if the child is normally developing it
will remain open and will depend on her immediate surroundings if she is going
to become sexist or racist or liberal minded. But in order to become any of that
she will need to develop the right attitude toward others, the one that will allow
her to treat them as intentional beings with their own minds first.
There is another point that needs to be made here. The findings that indicate
that our own mind is being constituted along with our knowledge of other
people’s mind is one of the single most important insights of developmental
psychology. The sceptical worry about other people’s minds starts off with
the assumption that our own mind along with our self-knowledge comes
first while our knowledge of others is somehow derivative and comes later.
However, developmental psychology is telling us that developmentally this is
not the case. The studies on autism have shown that there is no mind of ours
or self-knowledge without knowledge of other minds and that they are being
constituted simultaneously in the first year of child’s life. Thus, it seems that
there is no impairment in social cognition without the profound impairment
in self awareness and affective development. The question now is whether these
findings and the above points could satisfy our philosophical sceptic.
Ljiljana Radenović: Empirical research into the problem of other minds... 153
I have shown that we could answer Hyslop’s worries that the attitudinal
approach is similar to sexism or racism in a sense that it gives us the feeling
of certainty but that it may as well be unfounded as the other two. I have
pointed out that there is developmental disanalogy (if not structural disanalogy)
between attitudinal approach to other people’s minds, on one hand, and sexism
and racism, on the other. This means that if they are at least developmentally
different and if the attitudinal approach has the primacy over other two we don’t
have to worry about that it might turn out that we are wrong about other people’s
minds in the same way as many have been shown to be wrong about inferiority
of women or other races. Furthermore, I have argued that in developmental
terms there is no asymmetry between our own mind and self-knowledge on one
hand and other people’s minds and our knowledge of their minds, on the other.
As developmental science has shown both kinds of knowledge emerge in the
same time. But, is this developmental dispersal of asymmetry sufficient to fight
the sceptic? The answer must be no. However, some conditions apply. So, let me
conclude with some thoughts about the nature of the sceptical endeavour.
As we have seen in the previous section our language is such that it enables
us to abstract from many situations as well as to imagine and conceive of many
novel ones. So, to all of the above findings from psychology the skeptic might say
that they are of no help because we can still imagine situation in which all people
around us are just robots. We can imagine that such robots have raised us and
that we have passed though all of the necessary stages of normal psychological
development which includes the development of our proper attitude toward
others as fellow human beings and persons. But, in this imagined situation this
attitude would be misleading as these others would have no inner mental life
whatsoever. All of this we can imagine so the skeptic still has the space to remain
skeptical should she decide to do so. However, as I said some conditions apply.
First, it is not clear if the imagined situation is consistent at all. A thought
experiment of this kind could go astray. While philosophers are inclined to argue
that they can imagine all sorts of things it might turn out that imagining is more
demanding than they have initially thought. The famous ‘brain in a vat’ thought
experiment has been challenged in this way (Thompson and Cosmelli, 2011).
Thompson and Cosmelli have argued that once we start imagining the very
details of how the brain in a vat functions it turns out that such brain would not
be able to function without something like an operational body. So, for instance,
in order to be alive such brain would need to have some sort of metabolism (the
exchange of nutritive elements and oxygen). Also, simulating perception would
require something like an operational eye (see e.g. A. Clark 2001) and so on. All
of this would require some sort of body. However, to imagine a brain without the
body was the sole purpose of this thought experiment. In the case of the thought
experiment of our skeptic it remains to be seen if developmental psychology
could play a role similar to the role that neurophysiology played in ‘the brain
in a vat’ scenario. But, even if we cannot make such a strong case against our
skeptic (as Thompson and Cosmelli made against theirs) we should still hold
on to the insights about the development of human mind, social cognition, and
154 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
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156 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
Abstract: In this paper I shall consider the similarities and differences in the
cosmological argumentation on the existence of God between the 9th-century
Muslim philosopher al-Kindi and contemporary Christian philosopher William
Lane Craig. My focus here will not be on the value and soundness of their
argumentation, but only on the structure and type of their arguments. The credit
for this argumentation’s reappearance in the modern thought belongs to Craig, who
referred to it, above all, in his book Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979). The
basic elements of their general form of argument can be found in the works of the
6th-century Christian philosopher John Philoponus. All major steps of Craig’s kalam
cosmological argumentation can be found in al-Kindi’s works. Bearing in mind his
large opus on the kalam cosmological argument, it is surprising to see Craig writing
that this argument is „extremely simple”, and has the form as follows: 1. Everything
that begins to exist has its cause. 2. The world began to exist. 3. Therefore, the world
has its cause. Generally considered we might think that a better way to express this
argumentation would follow three major steps: 1. First, it has to be proved that
the world is not eternal, or that it began to exist. 2. Second, that the world does
not come to exist by itself, but that it has a cause of its beginning. 3. Third, that
cause of the beginning of its existence is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic God.
Philoponus gives his arguments only for the first two steps of this argumentation.
Al-Kindi presents his arguments for all three steps. Craig, in essence, repeates al-
Kindi’s arguments, but adds some convergent arguments that are based on two
contemporary scientific theories, unknown during Philoponus and al-Kindi’s times:
Big Bang cosmological theory and the second law of thermodyamics.
Lane Craig. Our focus here will not be on the value and soundness of their
argumentation, but only on the structure and type of their arguments. The
medieval kalam cosmological argument, which in its complete structure begins
with al-Kindi’s works, has almost been forgotten in the modern West. All credit
for its new life belongs to Craig, who referred to it, above all, in his book Kalam
Cosmological Argument (1979).2
Bearing in mind his large opus about the kalam cosmological argument, it is
surprising that Craig writes that this argument is „extremely simple”, and has the
fallowing general form:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The world began to exist.
3. Therefore, the world has a cause.
It is probable that this form of argument was explicitly presented for the
first time by al-Ghazali, who, in his book Kitab al-Iqtisad, writes: „Every being
which begins has a cause for its beginning; now the world is a being which
begins; therefore, it possesses a cause for its beginning” (Al-Ghazali, 1963: 15–
16). Rudimentary elements of this general form of argument we can find in the
works of 6th-century Christian thinker John Philoponus.
But the general form of argument is not simple at all, and is definitely
not „extremely simple”. This argument has a complex structure containing
many subarguments. We shall now present the general structure of the kalam
cosmological argumentation, which one can recognize in both al-Kindi, and
Craig. I think that, rather, this argument develops trough three major steps:
1. First, it must be proved that the world is not eternal, or that it began to
exist.
2. Second, that world does not come to exist by itself, but it has a cause of
its beginning.
3. Third, that the cause of the beginning of its existence is monotheistic God.
eternal or that it began to exist. Some of his arguments are repeated in writings
of medieval Muslim and Jewish thinkers (Davidson, H., 1969). It seems that he
believes that it is self-evident that the world is not cause of itself, and that the
cause of the beginning of the world is a monotheistic conceived God.
Al-Kindi was, it seems first thinker who gave the full structure of the kalam
cosmological argument. He had developed his own argument for the finitude of
world, an argument for the thesis that the world has a transcendent cause (or
that world is not cause of itself), and argument that the cause of the beginning of
the world is the God of monotheism. These are essentially the same steps, which
make up the parts of Craig’s contemporary kalam cosmological argumentation.
Because of this, their arguments are suitable for comparison.
3 One can see the concept of “homogeneous magnitude” in Euclid’s Elements (Book. 5. Def. 3.).
160 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
In his works On first philosophy and On Divine Unity and the Finitude of the
World’s Body, the homogeneous magnitude under consideration is the body. In
the work On the Finitude of the Universe the object of argumentation is a pure
concept of homogeneous magnitude. In On What cannot be Infinite and of What
Infinity May be Attributed the objects under consideration are just „something”
or „thing”. In accordance with all that he says, it seems that al-Kindi is motivated
by didactic reasons. Namely, in the latter essay al-Kindi writes: „I am penning
here what is in my opinion sufficient on view of the extent of your knowledge.”
(Al-Kindi, 1975: 194)
One of the most interesting parts of al-Kinidi’s opus is his attempts to give a
proof to the first premise of the above-mentioned argument. As we have said, his
argumentation begins with axioms. Despite al-Kindi presenting these axioms in
different variations, we shall cite one presented in On the First Philosophy. This
„true first premises which are thought with no mediation” are, he writes, the
following:
1. All bodies of which one is not greater than the other are equal.
2. Equal bodies are those where the dimensions between their limits are
equal in actuality and potentiality.
3. That which is finite is not infinite.
4. [When] a body is added to one of equal bodies it becomes the greatest
of them, and greater than it had been before that body was added to it.
5. Whenever two bodies of finite magnitude are joined, the body which
comes to be from both of them is of finite magnitude.
6. The smaller of every generally related thing is inferior to the larger, or
inferior to a portion of it (Al-Kindi, 1974: 114).
After presenting these axioms al-Kindi goes on to the argument itself. The
type of argument that he applies to the object of argumentation – the body –
is reductio ad absurdum argument. Al-Kindi, as is usual in the case of reductio
ad absurdum, begins with an assumption of a reductio, which is the following:
„Now if there is an infinite body, then whenever a body of finite magnitude is
separated from it, that which remains of it will either be a finite magnitude or an
infinite magnitude.” In this type of argument, it is usually sufficient to prove that
one of the disjuncts is contradictory or that it leads to a contradiction. In that
case, the other disjunct will necessarily be true. Al-Kindi tries to demonstrate
that both disjucts are contradictory or absurd.
The argument for the first disjunct is presented in this way: „If that which
remains of it is a finite magnitude, then whenever that finite magnitude which is
separated from it is added to it, the body which comes from them both together
is a finite magnitude [ax. 5]; though that what comes to be from them both is
that, which was infinite before something was separated from it. It is thus finite
and infinite, and this is an impossible contradiction” (Al-Kindi, 1974: 115).
The second disjunct is divided into a new disjunction, and al-Kindi’s reductio
here takes the following form: „If the remainder is an infinite magnitude, then
whenever that which was taken from it is added to it, it will either be greater
than or equal to what it was before addition”. The argument for the absurdity of
the first subdisjunct of the second disjunct goes as follows:
If it is greater than it was, than that which has infinity, the smaller of two
things being inferior to the greater, or inferior to the portion of it – if the smaller
body is inferior to the greater, then it most certainly is inferior to a portion of it
– and thus the smaller of the two is equal to a portion of greater. Now, two equal
things are those whose similarity is that the dimensions between their limits are
the same, and therefore the two things possess limits – for ‘equal’ bodies which
are not similar are those (in) which one part is numbered the same, though (as a
162 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
whole) they differ in abundance or quality or both, they (too) being finite – and
thus the smaller infinite object is finite, and this is an impossible contradiction,
and one of them is not greater than the other. (Al-Kindi, 1974: 115)
The second subdisjunct of the second main disjunct al-Kindi presents in this way:
If it is not greater than that which was before it was added to, a body having
been added to a body and not having increased anything, and the whole of this
is equal to it alone–it alone being a part of it–and to its (own) part, which two
(parts) join, then the part is like the all, (and) this is impossible contradiction.
(Al-Kindi, 1974: 116)
The aim of this argumentation is to give proof that the world a parte ante is
not infinite. Al-Kindi thinks that by this argumentation he „has been explained
that any quantitative thing cannot have infinity in actuality”, and, since time
is quantitative, it cannot have infinity in actuality. Therefore, time must have
a finite beginning. Al-Kindi comes to the conclusion that the world a parte
ante is finite through the principle of coextensivness, according to which time,
motion and body are coextensive. We should put aside al-Kindi`s sophisticated
argumentation regarding the coexstensivness of time, motion, and body. It is
sufficient here to say that al-Kindi comes to the conclusion that the world a
parte ante is finite, through the coextensivness of time and the ‘body of whole’
(universe). Because time is duration of the body, there cannot exist any body
without time. Thus, if time is a parte ante finite, than the body of whole or the
universe is a parte ante finite also. In this way, we come to the conclusion that
the world begins to exist (Al-Kindi, 1974: 116–121; 2007: 143–145).
Let us now see how Craig comes to this same conclusion. After proving that
the actual infinite is only a conceptual idea, and that it cannot be something
that exists in reality, Craig claims that an infinite temporal regress of events is
an actual infinite. Therefore, an infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist.
But because the temporal existence of world a parte ante is nothing other than
the temporal series of past events of the world’s existence, than the world must
begin to exist.
The second argument of the first set of argumentation, the argument based
on the impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition, Craig (with
Sinclair) calls metaphysical, or philosophical, or deductive arguments (Craig, L.
W. and Sinclair, D. J., 2009: 103). This argument has the following general form:
1. The temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive
addition.
2. A collection formed by successive addition cannot be an actual infinite.
3. Therefore, the temporal series of events cannot be an actual infinite.
At the beginning of the presentation of this argument, in On the First
Philosophy, al-Kindi clearly suggests that it is an independent argument by
saying: ‘Let us now explain it in another way that it is not possible for time to
have infinity in actuality’ (Al-Kindi, 1974: 121). He again considers this issue
reductio ad absurdum, but now in classical form according to which the absurdity
Drago Đurić: Al-Kindi’s and W. L. Craig’s cosmological arguments 163
of one disjunct implies that the other disjunct becomes true. Issue by means of
a reductio is the next disjunction: past time is either infinite or finite. Here he
assumes the coextension of the time and body. Al-Kindi defends the thesis that
past time is finite by showing that other disjunct is subject to contradiction or
absurdity. This argument, already known to Philoponus, al-Kindi presents in
the following way: „If a definite time cannot be reached until a time before it is
reached, nor that before it until a time before it is reached, and so to infinity; and
the infinite can neither be traversed nor brought to an end; than the temporally
infinite can never be traversed so as to reach a definite time” (Al-Kindi, 1974:
121–122). In other words, if in its current state world must have traversed a
infinite number of previous states, than, because infinity cannot be traversed, the
current state of the world would never exist. But the current state of the world
does exist. Therefore, the world has a finite number of previous states, and it has
no infinite past. Consequently, there is a beginning of the world’s existence.
Craig also says that this argument is independent because it „denies that the
collection containing an actual infinite number of things can be formed by adding
one member after another.” The core of Craig argumentation is very similar to al-
Kindi’s argument. Let us see how this looks in Craig’s version. He writes:
[B]efore the present event could occur, the event immediately prior to it
would have to occur; and before that event could occur, the event immediately
prior to it would occur; and so on ad infinitum. One gets driven back and
back into the infinite past, making it impossible for any event to occur. Thus,
if the series of past events were beginningless, the present event could not have
occurred, which is absurd. (Craig and Sinclair, D. J., 2009: 118).
Before we come to this last step in the structure of the kalam cosmological
argument, let us say something about Craig’s consideration of the second step.
In many of his shorter presentations Craig simply assumes the causal principle
expressed in the first premise of the „simple” general form of the argument. Craig but
usually considers this question in a discussion regarding the Big Bang cosmological
hypothesis (see Craig, L. W. and Smith, Q., 1993). In many of his considerations of
this question Craig rejects the hypothesis that world begins its existence uncaused,
spontaneously, or that it is cause of its own beginning, and he offers us arguments
for the hypothesis that there was a cause of the world’s beginning. His arguments
usually have a probabilistic character. His argument for the hypothesis that there
was a cause of the world’s beginning is more probable than other hypotheses. In one
of his last declarations on this question he says that the principle expressed in the
premise „everything that begins to exist has a cause” is „obviously true – at least,
more plausibly true than its negation” (Craig, 2009: 182).
In his conclusion, Craig gives us three closely connected reasons for this.
First, he defends an old metaphysical principle ex nihilo nihil fit. In other essays,
he writes that, „if absolutely nothing existed prior to the Big Bang – no matter,
no energy, no space, no time, no deity – , than it seems impossible that anything
should begin to exist” (Craig, 1993: 627). It is thus more probable that there
was a cause of the world’s beginning. For the second reason he asks why only
universe? Namely, if the causal principle is valid for all other cases in the world,
then why would it not be valid for the beginning of the world itself? Third,
Craig’s reason rests on the experiential confirmation. The general validity of the
causal principle (validity without exception) has its confirmation, thinks Craig,
in both our everyday life and scientific experiment. With regard to the general
validity of the causal principle in science he cites the „naturalistic philosopher
of science” Bernulf Kanitscheider, who writes that the rule ex nihilo nihil fit is a
„metaphysical hypothesis which has proved so fruitful in every corner of science
that we are surely well-advised to try as hard as we can to eschew processes of
absolute origin” (Kanitscheider, 1990: 344). The validity of the causal principle,
concludes Craig, is more probable then its negation. Bing bang cosmology does
not allow for material cause, because before the big bang no matter, energy,
space, or time exists. However, in accordance with his probabilistic mode of
argumentation, Craig writes: „For if coming into being without a material cause
seems impossible, coming into being with neither a material nor an efficient
cause is doubly absurd” (Craig and Sinclair, 2009: 189).
Kindi offers us an argument for the oneness of God in On the First Philosophy
and On Divine Unity and the Finitude of the World’s Body. Here we will present
his argument according to his last work, although in this work he uses the word
‘Creator’. It is, in the flow of his entire argumentation, too „early”. Namely, with
little bit of benevolence to al-Kindi`s opus we can find a relatively developed
argument for a oneness of a cause, and than an argument that this cause is a
Creator or, as he says, an agent. Instead of Creator we will here use the word
cause. Applying the thesis of impossibility of infinite regress to this issue, al-
Kindi in his argumentation starts with the disjunction that this cause must be
either one or many. If they are many then they must be composite. Compositions,
writes he, „have a composer”. If it is a many, then it must have a composer, etc. In
this way then there is „something [that is, the sequence of agents] that is actual
infinite – but the falsity of this has been explaind” (Al-Kindi, 2007: 147–148).
Therefore, the first cause must be one.
Craig basically repeats al-Kindi’s argumentation. He writes that the first
cause must be uncaused, „since [...] an infinite regress of causes is impossible”.
Although „one could [...] arbitrarily posit a plurality of causes in some sense
prior to the origin of the universe, but ultimately, if the philosophical kalam
arguments are sound, this causal chain must terminate in a cause which is
absolutely first and uncaused”. Craig adds the principle of Ockham’s razor to al-
Kindi’s argumentation, which, as he thinks, „dictates that we are warranted in
ignoring the possibility of a plurality of uncaused causes in favor of assuming the
unicity of the first cause” (Craig and Sinclair, 2009: 192).
The other property of the first cause to which both al-Kindi and Craig refer
is that this cause is personal. Al-Kindi, in the On the First Philosophy, further
concludes that the first cause is the True One. This True One is „the cause from
which there is a beginning of motion”. That which sets something in motion
is, he says, „the agent” (Al-Kindi, 1974: 162). In The One True and Complete
Agent and the Incomplete Metaphorical „Agent” he writes that „first true action
is bringing being into existence from nonbeing”. This action is properly God’s
action. Only to this action properly applies the term „creation”. Namely, „the true
agent acts upon what is affected without itself being acted in any way” (Al-Kindi,
2007a: 169). The True Agent, as the first, is the real and last origin of motion.
Because of this, it can be called a Creator.
In Craig’s language, the action of al-Kindi’s agent is, basically, at the personal
action. Craig (with Sinclair) offers us three reasons for the personal character of
the first transcendent cause. Let us present them in short. First, he cites Richard
Swinburne (Swinburne, 2004, 35–38) who claims that there are two types of
causal explanation: scientific explanation explicated in the language of laws and
initial conditions and personal explanation in terms of agents and their volitions.
According to the Big Bang hypothesis, the first state of the universe „cannot
have a scientific explanation, since there is nothing before it, and therefore, it
cannot be accounted for in terms of laws operating on initial conditions” (Craig
and Sinclair, 2009: 193). Second, to the personal character of the First Cause,
we arrive, suggests Craig, by a conceptual analysis of it. With that analysis, it
is not hard to show, he writes, that the first cause must be an immaterial,
166 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
beginningless, uncaused, timeless, and spaceless being. He finds that there are
only two candidates we can describe with these attributes: either abstract objects
or unembodied minds. Abstract objects (like numbers, sets, propositions, and
properties) cannot be first cause. Therefore, cause of the beginning of the world
can only be an unembodied mind. Third, that the First Cause has a personal
character is also implied, he writes, „by the fact that only personal, free agency
can account for the origin of a first temporal effect from a changeless cause”
(Craig and Sinclair, 2009: 193).
In the end, we can conclude that Al-Kindi’s kalam cosmological argument
has all the elements contained in Craig’s more developed argument. The main
differences are in the additional convergent and confirmatory arguments, which
are developed in contemporary science and philosophy.
References
Al-Kindi (1974). On the First Philosophy (intr. and comm. Ivry, L. A). In: Al-
Kindi’s Metaphysics, Albany: State University of New York Press.
Al-Kindi (1975). On What cannot be Infinite and of What Infinity May be
Attributed, in: Islamic Studies Vol. 14. No. 2. (transl. Shamsi, A. F.)
Al-Kindi (2007). On Divine Unity and the Finitude of the World’s Body, in:
Classical Arabic Philosophy – An Anthology of Sources, (ed. and transl.,
McGinnis, J. & Reisman, C. D.), Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis/
Cambridge.
Al-Kindi (2007a). The One True and Complete Agent and the Incomplete
Metaphorical „Agent”, in: Classical Arabic Philosophy – An Anthology of
Sources, (ed. and transl., McGinnis, J. & Reisman, C. D.), Hackett Publishing
Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge.
Al-Kindi (1965). On the Finitude of the Universe, in: Isis, Vol. 56, No. 4. (transl.
Rescher, N. & Khatchadourian, H.)
Craig, L. W., (1979), Kalam Cosmological Argument, London: Macmillan & Co
Craig, W. L. (1993). „The Caused Beginning of the Universe: A Response to
Quentin Smith”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44.
Craig, L. W. and Sinclair, D. J. (2009). „The Kalam Cosmological Argument”, in:
The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (ed. Craig, L. W. and Moreland,
P. J.) Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell
Craig, L. W. and Smith, Q. (1993). Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology,
Oxford: Clarendon.
Hilbert, D. (1964). „On the Infinite”, in: Philosophy of Mathematics, Englewood
Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.
Kanitscheider, B. (1990). „Does physical cosmology transcend the limits
of naturalistic reasoning?”, in: Studies on Mario Bunge’s „Treatise”, (ed.
Weingartner, P. and Doen, G.) Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Swinburne, R. (2004). The Existence of God, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya Original Scientific Paper
San Jose State University UDK 164
1. Introduction
The philosophy of alethic, as opposed to deontic or epistemic, metaphysical
modality studies the logic, semantics, metaphysical, and epistemic issues
pertaining to modal statements. A statement of alethic modality contains either
the phrase ‘it could have been the case that’ or the phrase ‘ it could not have
been the case that’, or some linguistic variant, such as ‘it is possible that’ or ‘it
is impossible that’. In the philosophy of modality the central goal is to: (a) find
the correct logical codification of alethic modality, (b) the valid rules of modal
reasoning, and (c) the correct formal semantical treatment of modal statements
that does not commit us ontologically to entities or theses about objects and
properties that are unacceptable, given our other commitments. Finally, a
comprehensive treatment includes: (d) an account of how we know or can come
to be justified in believing any number of modal claims.
One of the most important advances in the philosophy of modality was
the introduction of Kripke-style semantics for propositional modal logic by
Saul Kripke. The model he introduced relies on a set of possible worlds W, a
distinguished actual world @, and a binary accessibility relation R defined on
W. It is necessary that P, ‘P’, is true at a world w just in case P is true at every
world accessible from w. It is possible that P, ‘P’, is true at a world w just in case
P is true at some world accessible from w. The following axioms and conditions
characterize various ways in which one can understand the space of possible
worlds via the accessibility relation. The four axioms conjoined constitute the S5
system of propositional modal logic.
K: (P Q) (P Q) Normal / Distribution
T: P P Reflexive: wi[wiRwi]
B1: P P Symmetric: wiwj[wiRwj wiRwj]
S4: P P Transitive: wiwjwk[(wiRwj wjRwk) (wiRwk)]
The conjunction of the T, B, and S4 axioms can be captured through the
characteristic axiom of the S5 system.
E2: P P Equivalence (Reflexive, Symmetric, and Transitive)
Dummett-Walters
After explaining Dummett’s purported counterexample to the B axiom and
how Dummett tentatively extends it S4, Walters argues that the counterexample
to B fails, but that it succeeds as a counterexample to S5.
What actually follows [from Dummett’s example] is that S5 is to be rejected.
Let us call the proposition that Dummett is concerned with ‘P’. Dummett claims
that P is necessarily true in u, so that at w we have P. He also claims that
this proposition is possibly false in w, namely, P. But what follows from the
conjunction of P P is the falsity of E: P P. (Walters 2014: 4)
Because I am not engaging the question of whether Dummett’s
counterexample is a counterexample to B, I will not engage the excellent work
done by Walters in showing that it is not a counterexample to B. Rather, I will go
on to simply generate the Dummett-Walters argument against S5.
Let w be the actual world.
Let P be the statement: there are unicorns.
Dummett holds, contrary to Kripke, that in w: both P and P hold.
Let u be a world in which there are creatures resembling the unicorns of the
myth, which belong, like deer, to the order Artiodactyla.
170 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
Let v be a world in which there are creatures resembling the unicorns of the
myth, which belong, like horses, to the order Perissodactyla.
Necessity of Order Membership, NOM: Where x ranges over species, if x
belongs to order , then x belongs to essentially, and, since what is essentially
true of x is necessarily true of x, it follows that x.
Let: F = the order Artiodactyla
Let: G = the order Perissodactyla:
From the description of u, v, and NOM, it follows that
Fx holds in u.
Gx holds in v.
The Dummett-Walters argument is the following:
1. In the actual world w: P and P are true, since although there are
no unicorns in the actual world, that is P is true in w, it is possible that
there are unicorns and possible that there are not unicorns. In other
words, Dummett holds, contrary to Kripke, that from the actual world
the statement that there could have been unicorns is true and that there
might not have been unicorns is true.
2. P is true in u, since in u there are creatures resembling unicorns,
which are of the order Artiodactyla, and by the necessity of order
membership, being of the order Artiodactyla is essential to all creatures
that are of the order.
3. P is true in w, since u is accessible from w, and in u: P is true.
4. P P is true in w, from (3) and (1) by conjunction.
5. P P is true in w, from (4) and the equivalence of P:: P.
6. [P P] is true in w, from the equivalence of [ ]:: [ ].
The counterexample can also be captured through the following diagram:
u: F; P
v: G: P
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya: On the role of modal intuition in modal logic 171
Salmon-Vaidya4
Vaidya (2008) articulates a version of Salmon’s (1989) counterexample to the S4
axiom.
Essentiality of Origin, (EO): If is the origin of x, then in every possible
world in which x exists, it x is essential, and thus x is true.
V: A table t, which actually originated from a hunk of matter M carved
from a tree T could have originated from M*, a portion of wood carved
from T that is just slightly different from M.
The Salmon-Vaidya argument
1. Mt is an actual world fact.
2. Mt, from (1) and (EO).
3. V from modal intuition grounded in the view that social kinds, as
opposed to biological kinds, can tolerate vagueness at their origins.
4. Mt, since V grounds M*t.
5. Mt, from 4 and / equivalence.
6. Mt M. from (2) and (5) by conjunction
7. [ Mt Mt], from (6) and the equivalence of [ ]:: [
].
The core idea of the argument comes from V. If the material origin M, which
comes from tree T, of table t can tolerate vagueness, then it follows that although
t has it origin in M essentially, it is possibly possible that t originated from M*, a
portion of T just slightly different from M.
i) MR MM
ii) MM S5
iii) S5
iv) MR
The argument against S5 is of course the Salmon-Vaidya argument against
S4 based on V. In the case of CG a similar argument can be made, except that (i)
and (ii) would have to be replaced by:
(W) CG S5
However, there is a disanalogy between Chalmers and Williamson with
respect to the core argument. Vaidya (2008) argues for (i), and Chalmers (1999)
explicitly endorses (i). By contrast, Williamson does not explicitly endorse (W)
in the context of the epistemology of modality as developed in Williamson
(2007). Although Williamson (2013) 5 does defend S5, it should be noted that
his mutual endorsement of CG and S5 across (2007) and (2013) could not lead
one to conclude that (W) holds. More importantly, what is crucial is whether the
proof of the logical equivalence in CG requires assuming S5. If the only way to
prove that it is possible that p is logically equivalent to were it the case that p it
would not be the case that a contradiction follows depends on assuming that there
is only one space of possible worlds on which all worlds are accessible to each
other, than there would be reason to hold (W).
In what follows my interest here is in developing a problem that rests on
three claims.
(R) In order to know which system of modal logic, T, B, S4, or S5 is correct
we need to rely on modal intuitions.
(I) Modal intuitions, such as U and V, are inconsistent with -theories.
(D) If -theories are false, then U and V are unknowable.
Just as the concept of belief reveals that (b) is prima facie nonsense. The
concept of necessity reveals that (a) is prima facie nonsense. However, the
argument made here cannot be extended to the case of B, S4, and S5. Consider
(c), (d), and (e):
c) It is necessary that bachelors are unmarried males, but it is not
necessarily necessary that bachelors are unmarried males.
d) It is possibly necessary that bachelors are unmarried males, but it isn’t
true that bachelors are unmarried males.
e) It is possibly necessary that bachelors are unmarried males, but it isn’t
necessary that bachelors are unmarried males.
Consideration of (c) – (e) reveals that one must go beyond mere conceptual
truths or direct understanding. I hold that while (b) rests on a conceptual truth
about necessity, (c), (d), and (e) do not. As a consequence knowledge of B, S4, and
S5 requires consideration of the metaphysics of modality, some of which rests on
modal intuitions concerning kinds or a substantial scientific theory of kinds.
(I) is also controversial. Roca-Royes (2006) has argued that one can use a
modified version of Peacocke’s Unified Modal Extension Principle to show that
V can be made consistent with S4. The basic idea is that rather than holding that
M is the piece of wood from which t originates, we simply hold that M1....Mn is
the range of pieces of wood from which t originates. As a consequence, what is
necessary is that t originates from the range M1...Mn and not M. That is rather
than let V stand as a counterexample to S4, make it the case that because social
kinds can tolerate flexibility at their origin, the Unified Modal Extension Principle
requires us to select the range, instead of the particular slice in the range that is
M. Roca-Royes’s proposal is quite engaging and powerful. However, it would only
apply to the Salmon-Vaidya argument, and not to the case of the Dummett-Walters
argument. So, (I) is surely controversial. But when we push harder on this case
what is revealed is that there are two options: either deny the intuition concerning
the flexibility of origins or deny the inconsistency of the intuition with S4.
(D) is not as controversial as either (R) or (I). Rather, what (D) brings to
the forefront is the epistemic question about justification. More importantly,
it invites us to start inquiring into what other options outside of -theories
are available for coming to know modal truths. Let me close this section by
considering another option, which I don’t believe gets us out of the problem.
Consider Lowe’s (2012) proposal for how we come to know modal truths.
On his account we come to know what is necessary by way of essence. This sets
up a deductive model for arriving at knowledge of possibility.
A knows that E is the essence of x.
A knows that if E is the essence of x, then Ex.
A knows that F is inconsistent with E.
If F is inconsistent with E, then Fx.
Fx.
176 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
promising approach is available between the skeptical and the liberal position.
That approach takes us to a conservative picture of which intuitions should form
the data from which we attempt to identify the correct modal logic.
Let me begin articulating the conservative approach through a rough
distinction between two kinds of modal claims.6
Ordinary modal claims include the following:
i) It is possible for an unbroken table to be broken.
ii) A chair located in one part of a room could be located at another part
of the room.
iii) A person born as a non-twin could have had a twin.
iv) A table t* carved from M*, distinct from t carved from M, could have
been made from T.
Extraordinary modal claims include the following:
v) There could have been unicorns.
vi) Zombies (creatures physically identical to humans, but lacking
consciousness) could have existed.
vii) There could be a perfect duplicate of f.
viii) A table t which is carved from a hunk of wood M taken from tree T
could have been carved from a hunk of matter M* just slightly different
from M and still been the very same table.
Now the jarring, but crucial part: No precise distinction between the
ordinary and the extraordinary can be drawn. To seek an account between the
two with exact necessary and sufficient conditions is to engage in a philosophical
folly. However, some comments about the items on both lists can be made, and
also some structural features of the distinction can be noted. I will begin with
a comparative commentary, and then move into discussion of the structural
features.
Notice that (i) and (ii) concern ordinary objects in ordinary situations. They
also are in the penumbra of modal judgments we often make. We think about
whether a table can break and under what circumstances it might break when
purchasing one. And likewise we think about where a chair could be located in a
room relative to other furniture when we are thinking about arranging things in
a room. By contrast, (v) and (vi) are statements that, if we believe to be possible,
are likely based on stories that contain descriptions of such creatures. While
these stories can involve highly creative descriptions, they are often not based
on, nor contain the kinds of descriptions that would be necessary for one to have
even a reasonable belief in the existence of such things. The point can be more
carefully attended to by noting that within the genre of science fiction it is well
known that the stories are successful when they have the right blend of fantasy
and science.
6 There are many papers in which the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary (perhaps
the use of different words) is appealed to. Van Inwagen (1998) serves as one historically
important place, more recently, Bueno & Shalkowski (2014) serves as another place.
178 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)
Notice that (iii) and (vii) look similar with respect to duplication. However,
the claim in (iii) is quite innocuous and in the realm of the ordinary, while
(viii) appearing innocuous, is actually unclear. In (iii) we know what processes
account for a twin to be born. In (vii) we don’t know what it would mean for f to
have a perfect duplicate by way of a process. We know what perfect duplicate is,
but we don’t know what process could bring it about.
Notice that (iv) and (viii) also look similar. But again there is a key difference.
In (iv) the claim is that another table looking similar to the original table could
have been made from matter just slightly different from the matter that was used
to create the original table. The claim in (viii) is about one and the same table
having a modal property that of being possibly created from matter distinct from
that from which it was originally created. The distinction is that (iv) is what could
be created from the tree T by way of a process, while (viii) is about a process and
identity. Moreover, (viii) is stronger than (iv).
Now that we have some details about the list down, we can also note
some structural features of the distinction. First, and foremost, the distinction
between ordinary and extraordinary modal claims changes over time as we
learn more about the actual world both in science and mathematics. What is
legitimately believed to be possible or impossible at one time can later be deemed
impossible or possible simply through consideration of the relevant science and
mathematics. This meta-modal-epistemic insight is grounded in experience of
the actual world as discoveries are made in mathematics and science. For brevity
I mention only two examples.
At one period of time in mathematics it was thought that there is only one
size of infinity. Then G. Cantor’s argued that the real numbers could not be put
into a one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers. At one period of
time in physics it was thought that the speed at which an object was moving
could not effect time. Then A. Einstein argued that an object moving close to
speed of light would slow time.
Second, the distinction between the two groups does not rest on the
phenomenology of reflection. It is not that ordinary modal propositions feel
more certain on reflection than extraordinary modal propositions. For example,
consider the counterpossible: if the number 2 were the number 3, then ‘2 + 2
= 6’ would be true. The antecedent of the conditional is false in every possible
world, since it is impossible for 2 to be 3. The phenomenology of reflection on
the truth of the counterpossible is as strong as the phenomenology of reflection
on the truth of the unrealized possibility: although Miranda does not have a
brother, she could have had a brother. However, the closest possible world in
which the counterpossible is true can be argued to be much farther away from
the actual world as the unrealized possibility claim. Thus, some extraordinary
modal claims may have the same phenomenal reflection strength as simple
ordinary modal claims about unrealized possibilities. In addition, although more
controversial, some modal theorists might argue that the claim that unicorns
could have existed is as phenomenologically certain as the claim that a table that
is unbroken could have been broken.
Third, ordinary propositions do not distinguish themselves from the
extraordinary in virtue of how distant they are from the actual world. For the very
Anand Jayprakash Vaidya: On the role of modal intuition in modal logic 179
notion that w1 is more distant from @ than w2 is riddled with thorny problems,
two of which include the problems caused by the existence of impossible
worlds and the relativity of the similarity relation across worlds. In addition,
the counterpossible discussed above, is potentially case of a proposition that is
distant from the actual world, yet knowable.7
Now if the distinction is granted, then the approach to selecting a modal
logic I believe we should adopt is the conservative approach, CA.
CA: Ordinary modal propositions form the data from which a modal logic
should be brought into alignment through reflective equilibrium, and
not extraordinary modal claims.
CA has two primary benefits. First, while it is conservative as to which
data it allows in, the approach it takes to which modal logic we are justified
in believing in at a given time, it is also permissive with respect to change.
Were an extraordinary modal proposition to find additional support it would
then become an ordinary modal proposition, which in turn could force an
adjustment as to which modal logic we should accept. Second, it has the benefit
of focusing our attention on understanding theories, which in turn have modal
consequences, rather, than focusing on modal intuitions based merely on their
phenomenology. The second benefit does not aim to downplay the importance
of the phenomenology of modal intuitions. For the phenomenology of modal
intuitions has a role to play in an account of which modal logic we are to accept.8
Moreover, the focus of the second point is to push our attention to other areas
of mathematical and scientific inquiry that may corroborate our intuition. Just
as science and mathematics are blind without metaphysics, metaphysics without
science and mathematics is empty. As a consequence, the debate over the
significance of Dummett’s argument and Salmon’s argument is that they rest
on extraordinary intuitions, intuitions whose weight is significantly weak with
respect to the project of determining the correct modal logic. More weight ought
to be given to theoretical conditions about modal logic. One key exemplification
of this weighting issue between intuition and theoretical considerations is tackled
by Williamson (2013) in his articulation and defense of necessitism.
not over lap. Some intuitive propositions are non-ordinary, even if they fall short
of being extraordinary. Some unintuitive propositions are ordinary, even though
they are unintuitive. Since our concern is with the unintuitive that might turn
out to be ordinary, consider an example from mathematics, the Banach-Tarski
Theorem (BTT).
(BTT): Given a solid ball in 3-dimensional space, there exists a decomposition
of the ball into a finite number of non-overlapping pieces (i.e. disjoint
subsets), which can then be put back together in different ways to yield
two identical copies of the original ball.
For the purpose of simplification, and to make explicit the modal claim, we
can reduce (BTT) to (B).
(B): Where B is a solid ball in 3-dimensional space it is possible to convert B
into two identical copies of itself.
(B) is counterintuitive, but it is not extraordinary. While the content of the
claim is counterintuitive, the existence of a mathematical proof of it puts it in
the realm of ordinary modal propositions. Ordinary modal propositions track
established scientific and mathematical theories and propositions deducible
from them. While it is true that (N) is unintuitive, it is no more unintuitive
than (C). What is relevant is whether there are scientific and mathematical
facts that also play a role in justifying our belief in either (C) or (N). Take the
analogy with (B) again. (B) is counterintuitive, but this does not mean we should
reject it. Rather, because we also have a proof of it, we should disregard the
counterintuitive nature of (B) and seek another explanation for why we think
that (B) is counterintuitive. It could be that (B) is like a Müller-Lyer illusion,
even though we believe the lines to be the same length we cannot but seem them
as being of different lengths. Likewise, (N) is counterintuitive, but in light of the
sustained arguments that Williamson has offered in defense of (N), it maybe
that we have to look at (N) as a counterintuitive claim that rests on significant
logical and metaphysical theorizing and proof. Our continued belief that (N) is
counterintuitive may be nothing more than an illusion similar to what is at play
in the case of (B) and the lines of a Müller-Lyer diagram.
References
Chalmers, D. 1999. Materialism and the Metaphysics of Modality. Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 59: 473–496.
----------------. 2002. Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? In T. Gendler and
J. Hawthorne (Eds.) Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press.
Chudnoff, E. 2013. Intuition. Oxford University Press.
Dummett, 1993. Could There Be Unicorns? In his The Seas of Language. Oxford
University Press: 328–348.
Goodman, N. 1955. Fact, Fiction and Forecast. Harvard University Press.
182 BELGRADE PHILOSOPHICAL ANNUAL Vol. XXVII (2014)