Pl 258 Araby
“Araby” is a story about self-deception, but it raises the question of skepticism: is it possible to know anything at all for certain? The reference to the Garden of Eden and the dead priest’s old bicycle pump, the musty room where the dead priest lived, and the bazaar gallery that was as empty as a church reminds us of the loss of a religious grounding for our convictions. The narrator’s indulging in a romantic fantasy of a knight wending his way through the tumultuous and noisy crowds with his chalice held aloft waiting to serve his beloved gives us an image of a human being cut off from conversation with others and left to his own wishful thinking shows us the unreliability of sense impressions organized to suit our self interests. The young boy’s disillusionment at the end raises the issue of knowledge: is it possible to know anything outside of one’s own sense impressions?
Pl 258 Phaedo
In the Phaedo, Plato argues that knowledge cannot be derived from sense experience because sense experience is based on individual material objects which are always subject to change and about which we can only have opinions or beliefs, which are also subject to change. Furthermore, the bodily senses involve us in conflicting desires which lead to war and other entanglements. The perpetual demands and drives of the body make for increased dissatisfaction and the attempt to assuage this dissatisfaction with more desires. This is the lot of those who are trapped in the cave of appearances—forced to respond to that which is only apparently real.
The wise man or philosopher, according to Plato, can grasp the essential nature of a group of changing particulars by the use of reason, which grasps the Form of Beauty, or Justice, or Good reflected in a multitude of changing, concrete, particular, individual things. These essential Forms are not themselves colored, shaped, or of a particular size or weight, and hence cannot be grasped by the senses. The fact that we have concepts like Justice, Beauty, and the Good shows that we are endowed with a faculty of reason that is not bound up with the body. If what we know is immaterial, our souls which are responsible for such knowledge are immaterial as well and thus immortal. Knowledge then is the grasp of these immaterial, unchanging, timeless, necessary Forms which we will have full access to only after our souls are separated from our bodies and their allurements. Death is something to be welcomed by the philosopher rather than feared. Conclusion: knowledge is the grasp of necessary realities; belief or opinion is the temporary grasp of contingent appearances of these realities.
Pl 258 Descartes
Descartes, like Plato, is seeking a solid foundation for an account of knowledge understood as that which is certain and indubitable rather than dubious and possibly wrong. Like Plato, Descartes understands knowledge as the correct representation by the mind of the truth of reality (epistemology: theory of mind as representation). Unlike Plato, Descartes launches his investigation, not by analyzing current theories of knowledge, but by taking on the role of the skeptic—largely because he was involved in a culture of skepticism resulting from the Protestant Reformation, Gutenberg’s discovery of movable type, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, and the 30 years wars of religion. Descartes proceeds methodically to dismiss as genuine knowledge any belief (judgment of the mind) that could be doubted without a contradiction. The classes of beliefs which could be doubted are 1) beliefs derived from sense experience, because past deceptions have shown these to be dubious; 2) math and geometry, because of the possibility of deception by a malignant Genius; 3) the existence of God, which could be a figment of his imagination. As a result of this application of methodical doubt to his ideas, beliefs, or judgments, he finds there is one belief that it would be contradictory to doubt: that he thinks—because doubting is a form of thinking and would confirm that he thinks. Therefore, if he thinks he must exist. This, gives him the form of certainty that he is seeking: the apriori necessity of the grammatical predicate of a judgment belonging to the grammatical subject without the need of confirmation by sense experience. Applying this criterion of certainty to beliefs about his own nature, he sees that he cannot doubt that he is a thinking substance. However, the belief that he has a body can be doubted without a contradiction. The nature of body—if it exists—is necessarily an extended thing (divisible into parts), and therefore his mind or soul substance which is not divisible into parts must be distinct from his body substance which is so divisible. Finally, Descartes examines his idea of The Perfect Being to see whether he must ascribe existence to such a Being. He argues that a) an imperfect being could not have caused such an idea to exist in his mind and thus such an effect (the idea of the Perfect Being) must have been caused by a Being with the causal power that is equal to the substance of the effect; b) in addition, if existence were removed from the Perfect Being, it would not be perfect (just as a triangle with one side removed would no longer be a triangle), and therefore the perfect being must necessarily exist. Finally, because that Being (God) is perfect, he cannot be a deceiver and thus would not deceive one in conclusions drawn from the correct use of one’s faculties: the existence of bodies and other beings for example.
Pl 258 Rorty
Rorty wants to contrast his anti-foundationalist approach to philosophy with the foundationalist approach preferred by the tradition that extends from Socrates to Nietzsche and beyond. The foundationalist approach (Plato and Descartes in our text) sees philosophy as correct representation by the mind of the truths of reality. (The theory of knowledge that argues for this correct representation is called epistemology.) A representation of reality by an idea, judgment, or belief in the mind is considered correct if it passes the test of being certain and unjustifiable because it is given and serves as the foundation that justifies beliefs. Plato supposes such a foundation when he insists it is the duty of the mind to grasp the essential nature that a group of changing particulars reflects. This essential Form is unchanging and gives knowledge the necessity that Plato requires. Descartes argues that those beliefs that are grounded in apriori necessities, in which the belief is known to be true because the grammatical predicate belongs necessarily to the grammatical subject such that its denial would lead to a contradiction and therefore needs no confirmation by experience to determine its truth (e.g. bachelors are unmarried males vs. George Clooney is a bachelor) is a genuine knowledge judgment. This apriori judgment gives Descartes the necessity required for genuine knowledge. The foundationalist notion of “objectivity” is “grasp by the mind of an object as it is in itself independent of human additions.”
Rorty’s anti-foundational approach sees philosophy as hermeneutics or edification, a determination about which descriptions or vocabularies enable us humans to more successfully cope with our experience. Thus all descriptions in principle are revisable and contingent but those descriptions are considered more “objective” which are the product of intersubjective agreement about norms and their application according to the purpose of the particular language game which is being employed (scientific, aesthetic, political, religious, etc.). The anti-foundationalist sees language, not as an expression of the mind which is expected to correspond to a non-linguistic reality, but rather as a tool for use in helping us humans deal with our being in the world. Since we cannot get outside of language to see whether it corresponds correctly with reality or not,( since “reality” and “corresponds” have linguistic criteria), the best we can do in the way of evaluating beliefs is to compare one set of descriptions to alternative sets to see which set of descriptions works better for us. Thus we should always be searching for better self-descriptions (education or edification) through acquaintance with more novels, poems, plays, films, scientific, philosophical, and religious texts, etc. so that we have richer vocabularies to draw upon as tools for use in more satisfactory coping.
Pl 258 In a Grove
Akutagawa’s short story raises questions about the possibility of objective, absolute, certain truth in philosophy, inasmuch as human accounts of even the “same” event are inevitably shaped by personal, social, and political interest to such an extent that one cannot separate the objective “truth” of an account from the subjectivity of human narrativity.
Pl 258 Austin
John Austin follows Wittgenstein in taking the linguistic turn in philosophy, in particular a turn toward the examination of ordinary language (rather than the extraordinary metaphysical and epistemological language of classical philosophy) as a way of avoiding the “bewitchment of intelligence by the surface grammar of language.” For Austin, language does not picture or mirror the world but makes the kinds of discriminations that situate us as beings in the world.
Thus, with regard to the question, “What is Truth?” Austin argues that,
1) Philosophy is wrong to take the surface grammar of the noun, truth, as the name of some thing or quality of a thing. Rather one should ask, “When is it appropriate in ordinary discourse to use the expression “x is true?”
2) We use “is true” of statements, not beliefs (unless framed in the form of a statement), words (e.g. water), sentences (Take two steps forward.), pictures (of the Grand Canyon, for example).
3) A statement is true when it corresponds to the facts, descriptively (in naming types of things) and demonstratively (in making reference to a particular state of affairs that the types apply to), e.g. That dog (demonstrative) is brown (descriptive). Facts, however, are not things to be discovered in reality but ways of describing something according to the purposes of a particular language game (e.g. a legal fact vs. a scientific fact vs. a religious fact vs. an economic fact vs. a political fact, etc.). Correspondence is a matter of human conventional agreement as to when a statement adequately applies to a particular state of affairs, e.g. “Light is made up of particles and waves.” A statement does not correspond by “mirroring” reality.
4) A statement can be said to be true because it is part of the world. Thus, the statement “This wagon is red “can be said to be true or false but not “This wagon exists” or “This wagon is real,” or “This statement is false,” since existence, reality, and falsity are not part of the world, i.e. predicates of things.
5) For many statements, “true” or “false” would not be the appropriate assessment, since there are various degrees and dimensions of success in the fit of statements to a particular state of affairs, e.g. “That picture is a good drawing,” “That was a clever remark.”
6) Not all performatives are statements, e.g. “Watch out for the step,” “Give me your hand,” “I am naming the cat Bogart,” “I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” “Godspeed,” etc., and therefore are not candidates for the expression “is true” or “is false.”
Pl 258 Peirce
As a pragmatist Peirce argues that the meaning and truth of an expression or hypothesis (candidate for belief) is a product of the practical consequences or effects we could expect from applying the hypothesis, which consequences produce a belief or habit of action because of the satisfactoriness of the consequences for resolving a real doubt and attaining a firm belief. These beliefs with their attendant consequences are independently testable and therefore revisable if the expected consequences do not result or alternative consequences force new beliefs. A hypothesis or statement does not pretend to capture the whole of reality, but insofar as its consequences are forced upon us, we are permitted to say that that hypothesis or statement is true. Peirce says “reality” is what would result from everyone’s eventually using the pragmatic method for determining truth correctly.
Thus, the notions of “true” and “false” are closely aligned with the pleasure and pain we organisms experience in our actions of attraction and repulsion. Logical statements are therefore associated with normative statements of ethics (good and bad) and aesthetics (enjoyable and the distasteful) in that all three classes of statements get their evaluations from the satisfactoriness of the effects of the statements.
The pragmatic method of determining truth on the basis of practical effects is sharply contrasted with three discredited methods of determining the truth of beliefs: 1) the conviction that thinking a belief is true makes it true; 2) believing something is true because authority has so decreed; 3) grounding the truth of a belief on an a priori grasp of the essential nature of a particular object.
Pl 258 The Metamorphosis
Kafka’s novella raises the problem of personal identity, which, stated in classical terms, means “Is there some necessary, intrinsic principle which permits us to say of someone that s/he is the same person throughout non-essential changes. Gregor Samsa in the Kafka story seems to remain the same person in spite of significant bodily changes, which cause even his closest relative to deny identity of personhood.
Pl 258 Ryle
Ryle summarizes the doctrine common to Plato and Descartes on that principle of identity that is essential to identifying a person as the same person throughout successive changes as follows: the body substance is the principle of change; it is material, extended, and public and therefore subject to the predicates of physical, mechanical causality and spatial occupancy. The soul or mind substance on the other hand is the permanent principle of sameness and is immaterial, non-extended, and private and therefore subject to the predicates of thinking and feeling which are accessible only to the individual mind that has these thoughts. This official doctrine, Ryle argues, is deficient in that it cannot explain the causal interaction between a material substance and an immaterial substance. In addition, it cannot explain how one could know whether anyone else has a mind or what that mind is thinking, inasmuch as such information is private, not public.
These difficulties arise, says Ryle, from a category mistake, i.e. taking “mind” to be a substance in the same way that body is a substance but giving the mind substance characteristics the opposite of those of the body substance—immateriality and privacy, in the same way that “team spirit,” because it is a noun, is taken to be another, but immaterial, member of a team. Ryle, following Austin, asks us to reflect on the way in which we come to know and continue to apply the predicates “is thinking” or “is feeling angry” to people. We do so on the basis of public behavior, including what a person says on a particular occasion. Thus, human organisms do not “have” either minds or bodies: they are substances capable of physical (he weighs 180 lbs, has a tattoo, red hair, etc.) and mental (he is thinking, feeling angry, indecisive) predicates depending on the behavioral criteria appealed to on a particular occasion.
Pl 258 Locke
Locke is a foundationalist, meaning, that like Descartes and Plato he sees concepts and expressions of those concepts as true when they correctly represent reality as it is, independently of the way we talk about it. (Rorty and Austin and, in the main, Peirce are antifoundationalists, because they see concept and expressions as tools for satisfactory coping rather than correct representations.) The foundationalists take concepts to be representations of “things”—for Descartes it is substances and their qualities, for Locke sense impressions. Descartes is a rationalist, meaning that reason alone is the judge of the adequacy of our ideas about reality. Locke (1688) is an empiricist, meaning that he sees concepts as grounded in sense impressions. Our ideas, based on these sense impressions, are either simple—the report of a single sense, such as the idea of “red”—or complex—an idea based on a combination of simple sense impressions, such as the idea of “apple.” Thus, Locke inquires as to what sense impressions ground the idea of “self” or “person.” He concludes that the immaterial soul cannot be the ground for person, because it is conceivable that the soul could occupy multiple bodies or several souls occupy a single body at the same time or consecutively. One could never know whether the same soul was present or not throughout these changes. He also argues that the idea “man” is always associated with a body, so that a bodiless soul would not be a man. Finally he argues that the idea of “self” or “person” is grounded in the sense impressions of consciousness and memory, such that no matter what bodily or soul substance consciousness of self resided in, one is essentially that self which consciousness reaches back to. Locke concludes that the concept “same man” refers to the same body. The concept “spirit” refers to the immaterial principle of life. And the concept “same person” refers to the same self consciousness present to memory. Thus the same self could be present in several different bodies at different times and in several different souls, but one’s essential personal identity is bound up with the presence of self to consciousness that memory enables.
Pl 258 Hume
Hume is as much a foundationalist as Descartes and Locke, inasmuch as he assumes that the idea of personal identity must be grounded on a firm foundation in order to assure the simplicity and perdurance of identity throughout successive changes. However, as a good empiricist, committed to grounding ideas in sense impressions, Hume argues that since sense impressions have no necessary, unchanging connections with one another but rather are always contingent and subject to change, the idea of self or same personal self has no more substantial unity or perduring identity than the idea of apple. Just as the red, hard, sweet, odoriferous impressions on which the idea of apple is grounded are subject to change, making it impossible to sense some substantial “appleness” underlying the impressions, so the idea of self is grounded on fleeting impressions of desire, pleasure, pain, anxiety, hope, etc. which each of us currently experiences and which resemble impressions we have had at other times but are not identical with those impressions, making it equally impossible to experience a substantial self underlying our changing impressions. Thus, for Hume, there is no self, merely changing clusters—called constant conjunctions, not necessary connections—of sense impressions.
Pl 258 Zemach
Unlike Plato, Descartes, Locke, and Hume, and more in keeping with the linguistic position of Ryle, Zemach takes an anti-foundationalist stance with regard to the problem of personal identity, i.e. what constitutes a person as the same person throughout successive changes? Zemach contends that there is no single intrinsic essential metaphysical principle of unity that the expression “self” or “person” names. In order to convince his reader of this, he asks the reader to engage in a thought experiment to see whether any of the previous candidates argued for by classical philosophy as constituting the principle of human identity hold up to the reasoning of a rational egoist. The rational egoist, Zemach contends, would not regret losing every part of his present body if s/he could gain an improved one. The same could be said for consciousness of mental events and memories: the rational egoist would give these up in favor of mental contents that would improve his/her life prospects. The present soul that one has would also be given up as unnecessary to one’s present and future activities, and if one had to have a soul, a different one would do just as well.
Then Zemach turns to his main argument: sameness of personhood is a product, not of a metaphysical principle of unity, but rather of a linguistic decision—a decision to appeal to one or another of multiple sortal categories in order to call something the same or different. Just as a house can be called the same house or a different house depending on whether one wants to emphasize the materials out of which the house was made, the structure the house has, the location of the house, the arrangement of the interior and so forth, so a person can be called the same or different person by appealing to various categories that enable one to call the person the kind of person that a particular occasion might call for. The categories overlap. Some of them would be biological—DNA, the system of organs working in the body—others psychological—conviction sets, decisions, self-definitions—others legal, religious, political, economic, etc.—no one of which determines sameness of person for all linguistic interests. Thus, “same person” is decided by appeal to an arbitrary linguistic sortal category rather than an essential intrinsic nature that would be the foundation for a definition.
Zemach then goes on to show that “I” like “now” and “here” is an indexical that does not pick out any definite entity but shifts meaning according to the event of uttering the word and its application to a variety of instances (I am America, a single blade of grass, one of the forgotten ones, one of the happy few, an Irish American, a world of possibility, the face of despair, etc.). Thus, Zemach argues, “I” does not exist.
Pl 258 Guests of the Nation
Classical philosophy sees ethics as the determination of principles for evaluating free human behavior as morally good or bad. Under this definition, “morality” would be seen as personal or social codes which individuals or groups appeal to in order to justify behavior. These codes may or may not correspond to the principles required by ethics.
“Guests of the Nation” presents a dilemma facing members of the IRA in the treatment of British prisoners whom they have befriended. They seem to be under a moral obligation to obey the commands of the military authority to whom they have pledged their loyalty. This authority requires that the Irish guards execute their new friends in reprisal for the execution of Irish prisoners by the British. On the other hand, the Irish guards have become convinced that the British prisoners are not merely hostages but genuine friends who have actually pledged to join the Irish side if that is what it takes to retain their friendship and keep from being killed. The Irish decide reluctantly to execute the men, throwing them in a state of deep moral confusion and despair. What was the ethical obligation to be followed in this and other cases? That is the subject of the subsequent discussions.
Pl 258 Mortimer
Bishop Robert Mortimer provides an ethic which prescribes principles for resolving the conflict in moral codes that the Irish guards in “Guests of the Nation” struggle with. According to Mortimer, ethics is grounded in Moral Authority, which means that God’s law, clearly enunciated in Divine Revelation and passed on by the authority of the Church and made visible in universal natural moral law accessible to the universal reason of everyone—which law was intended to become part of the formation of each individual conscience—is the foundation of moral obligation. Mortimer concedes that the effects of fallen human nature sometimes lead to self-deception and often to gross violations of natural law, but this does not mean that natural moral law does not exist for reason to grasp. That is why the assistance of Divine Revelation is required for grace to build on nature. Both sources of moral authority are intended to aid humans to fulfill the end for which their natures were created, which end can be discerned by the use of reason in its control of emotions and appetites in the development of virtuous living. Ultimately, individual conscience is responsible for correctly fulfilling moral obligation.
Mortimer’s ethics should be brought into philosophical conversation with at least three previous conversation partners we have engaged in the course. C. S. Peirce has brought serious criticism to bear on the method of authority for determining truth. Peirce argues that authority gives us no criteria by which to judge whether one authority is more justified than another authority in making truth claims. In addition, authority should be considered authoritative only to the extent that its claims are independently testable by others. John Austin’s appeal to ordinary language would contest the ascription of the expression “law” to nature. Intentional agents can prescribe laws, not natural beings. Nature has regularities which can be generalized into theories, but these regularities cannot be described as the “purposes” or “ends” of nature, since non-intentional agents cannot have purposes. Finally, Gilbert Ryle would call Mortimer’s appeal to the immortal soul as the ground of the sacredness of each individual and its destiny for eternal inheritance a category mistake.
Pl 258 Mill
Mill begins with what he considers to be a self-evident truth that needs no proof (all genuine first principles need no proof): Human beings desire to increase and maximize happiness or pleasure and to diminish or minimize pain. From this he derives what he takes to be an objective principle of morality: that is morally good which is likely to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number affected by a proposed action. This goes beyond the egoist principle since it acknowledges that all human beings desire happiness and that a principle of morality should acknowledge this fact. Mill goes on to observe that “happiness” is a matter of quality as much as or more than a matter of quantity of pleasure: human happiness is a matter of attending to the higher faculties as well as the lower appetitive faculties. If there is ambiguity as to which of two pleasures will be likely to increase human happiness, the experience of those who have competence in a wide range of pleasures and pains may act as guides to what human experience teaches. If there is dispute among those with a wide range of experiences, the dispute should be decided by the greater numbers on one side of the issue than on the other.
Pl 258 A.J. Ayer
Ayer has taken the linguistic turn in philosophy, meaning that instead of analyzing how our concepts correspond to the world (Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume) Ayer wants to examine how our language relates to the world. However, unlike Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, and Rorty, Ayer is a foundationalist (his brand of foundationalism is called logical positivism because it is interested in the logic of factual statements), inasmuch as he is convinced that language should correspond to the facts of the world which can only be determined by sense experience. Therefore, Ayer asserts the verification principle governing the meaningfulness (whether it is a genuine statement whose truth or falsity can be determined by experimental tests) of language: only those utterances are meaningful which are either 1) tautologies (true by definition, such that it would be contradictory to deny them, such as bachelors are unmarried males) or 2) statements which are verifiable (able in principle to be verified but not necessarily verified at the moment) by some form of sense experience. All other utterances are either nonsense or expressions of feeling.
Applying this analysis to ethics, Ayer observes that alleged ethical “statements” are not definitions which are necessarily true (It would not be contradictory to say that “It is not good to obey God’s law,” or that “It is not good to fulfill the goals of nature,” or that :”It is not good to pursue the greatest happiness,” because conscience might require one to disobey God’s orders to slaughter innocent members of a pagan tribe or to use the sexual faculty for something other than procreation, or protect innocent lives when the whole would clearly benefit from harm done to them). Nor are ethical assertions such as “Adultery is immoral” or “It is wrong to steal” factual statements, since the expressions “immoral” and “wrong” cannot be verified or falsified by any form of sense experience. Thus we must conclude that ethical utterances are either nonsense (Gloggy every about hallelujah dual okay.) or expressions of feeling (“I am repulsed by adultery and so should you be” or “I hate stealing”).
Duggan noted that Utilitarianism can also be criticized because happiness is not a genuine goal of human striving but a by product or accompaniment of other activities which are often accompanied by certain psychological states. Secondly, the fact that human beings desire happiness does not yield the conclusion that happiness is what ought to be desired in all instances, nor does it make clear what distribution of happiness is optimal.
Ayer can be criticized for 1) assuming that “facts” are the delivery of sense experience and not linguistic determinations and 2) having to succumb to the criticism that his own principle of verifiability cannot be verified and therefore could be considered a meaningless utterance.
Pl 258 Duggan
The author of the letter to the governor of Brazil remarks that “good reason giving” is the mark of a moral subject. One who is incapable of justifying her/his actions by appeal to reasons for engaging in that activity (rather than causes) cannot be considered a moral subject in relation to that practice. The question of how one ultimately justifies one reasons or principles of justification for action is central to Duggan’s analysis. Following Wittgenstein, he argues that ultimately one cannot justify one’s principles of justification: one can only make a decision to commit oneself to criteria for what counts as “good,” “bad,” “warranted belief,” etc. Ultimately all justification is self-justification; we humans define who we are by the principles or vocabularies we commit ourselves to. And, thus, all final justification is auto-bio-graphical, telling a story about who we are and what we will be accountable for. In this regard, self- narrativity is the condition for being a moral agent. And it follows that if self-narrativity is the necessary condition for being a moral agent, to deprive another human being of the possibility of self-narrativity would be the gravest injustice we could commit and to provide the conditions for greater self-narrativity (knowledge, freedom, and care) would be the greatest virtue. In the inevitable case of clashes between narratives, the danger to be avoided is the threat of the totalization of a single or select narrative that subjugated narratives would be subsumed under. Further conversations among morally situated self-narrators should determine how these conflicts will be resolved and how expanding further conditions for self-narrativity can be made possible.
Pl 258 The House of Morgan
As an introduction to the major issue of political philosophy (which is to be distinguished from political science in that the latter is a factual study of how states acquire, maintain, and increase power) as formulated in the question, “What constitutes a just state?” John Dos Passos’ story brings out the central considerations governing the relation between the state and the individual. The house of Morgan seemed not to have acted unjustly (illegally) in acquiring the power it amassed in order to situate itself favorably to determine national policy. On the other hand, was the state that protected the freedoms of the Morgans acting justly to the other citizens of the state? Is freedom to acquire wealth the only justification for the state?
For purposes of further discussion, we will define the state as that individual or group that claims to have the (moral) right to coerce citizens. The question the subsequent thinkers ponder is that of justifying this claim and determining what kind of social arrangement would be just.
Pl 258 Plato’s Republic
In order to establish what Justice is, Socrates/Plato invites Thrasymachus to state his position. The latter replies that justice is that which serves the interest of the strongest party. Plato criticizes this view on the grounds that 1) if, as Thrasymachus agrees, the strongest party is not infallible and could make mistakes, then this party would be enforcing laws that do not serve his interests, and 2) like the arts of medicine, navigation, etc., which aim at improving the subjects of those arts, the art of governing is designed to improve or serve the interests of the governed, not the ruler. If the latter is to be compensated, it will be done in a way other than applying the art of governing.
Plato’s own position rests on an analysis of order within an individual as applied to the state. Just as an individual has reason, which should be the ruling element in human action, and emotion and appetite which should be subordinated to reason, so in the state those designed by nature to possess the rational element—the Guardians, because they are capable of grasping the essential Forms of reality by reason and not by sense and therefore have wisdom—should be the ruling element, and the Auxiliaries, because they are endowed with courage, should follow the rational laws of the Guardians in defending the state, and the Tradespersons, who abide by the virtue of temperance, should work to benefit the whole state under the guidance of the Guardians. Justice then is everyone fulfilling the role that nature has assigned to each.
Critique: 1) There is no evidence that essential Forms exist. 2) It is questionable whether any sense can be made out of “nature’s designs.”
Pl 258 JJC Smart
When Smart denies that justice is a moral concept and asserts that it is a legal or political concept instead, he is implicitly criticizing Plato’s notion of justice as being required by the very nature of the state, composed as it should be of a ruling element that guides the auxiliary and trade elements of the state. When each class observes its proper role, Plato says, a just state is in place. Smart joins the list of thinkers that, beginning in the 17th century, saw the state as conventional rather than natural (as Plato conceived it). This group of thinkers, beginning with Hobbes and extending through Locke and Jefferson, argued that the state was a result of a social contract by which individual humans strove to protect themselves from the perils of competing in an unregulated state of nature by agreeing to give up the right to everything in a state of nature in return for a certain security that living under rules would afford. The version of the social contract that sprung from the philosophy of John Locke asserted that it was for protection of inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property that humans freely entered into a social contract to be governed by a legislative, executive, and judicial element chosen by the majority who would represent the will of all. In contemporary philosophies of the state, Nozick represents this position arguing for a minimal state that merely protects rights. Smart criticizes this position on the grounds that this whole tradition cannot make sense of metaphysical or moral rights which are inalienable (for Smart, these are all to be construed as legal or political rights). Another contemporary social contract theorist is John Rawls who argues for a social contract devised under a veil of ignorance in which the participants to the contract would know nothing of their personal or social position, only that they are rational self-interested individuals. In this position, Rawls argues for a concept of justice as fairness, in which each participant would agree on 1) a principle of equality in liberties and distribution of goods, services, and offices, to be modified by a difference principle that would depart from the equal distribution condition only if the unequal compensation were to benefit all, particularly the least advantaged, and be open to all. Smart criticizes the Rawls’ version inasmuch, as a utilitarian, Smart argues that in certain cases, when maximum benefit to the whole would require diminishing the liberties of some, justice would not be violated by these utilitarian adjustments. Smart concludes that a utilitarian will hold that a redistribution of the means to happiness is right and just if it maximizes the general happiness, even though some persons, even the least advantaged ones, are made worse off. (414B)
Pl 258 Fisk
Fisk is interested in determining economic justice and he begins by identifying the flaws in the contemporary versions of social contract theory, both the libertarian liberal position of Nozick and the social liberal position of Rawls. Libertarian capitalism has three major defenses for justifying the economic inequality in contemporary society. The first is the absolute right of an individual property owner to the profits realized from the products that his workers produce. Fisk criticizes this position on the grounds that it is a violation of the workers’ moral rights to the fruit of their labor. They have a right, Fisk argues, not only to be paid for their labor but to be compensated for profit that the fruits of their labor realize. To deprive them of that compensation is to steal from them what could not exist without their effort—the product and its value. This increases the power of the owner to maximize his/her capital and use that power against the worker and for the capitalists’ own advancement.
The second defense is that present inequality motivates those occupying the lower ranks to produce more and thus is advantageous to the worker and to society at large. Fisk argues that this in fact does not happen, because the power of the owners assures that the level of inequality will remain the same.
The third defense is the fair wage defense, according to which a “fair” wage is the one determined by market considerations, the law of supply and demand. Fisk argues that there will always be an excess of labor supply which assures that a great mass of workers will receive wages barely above subsistence.
Fisk’s solution is the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution at least insofar as production relates to the fruits of a worker’s labor. Fisk would like to see the wage system abolished in favor of collective agreement on compensation depending on the contribution to the means of production that each social group makes.
Fisk criticizes Rawls’ principles of fairness as being too absolute and not specifically applied in a way that is relative to production, which is what economic justice is about.
Fisk also criticizes Soviet style state capitalism, because under such a state workers work for state bureaucrats and not for themselves and one another.
Pl 258 Little Bessie and Job
The problem of evil can be characterized as the seeming contradiction that results from holding both of the following two propositions:
1) God is all powerful, all loving, and all knowing—the contention of traditional theism
2) Suffering of innocents exits—empirical, historical fact.
If God is all powerful, he would be able to prevent such suffering. If he is all loving, he would want to prevent it. If he is all knowing, he would have known that the condition of his creation would result in such suffering. Then why does such suffering exist?
The theist defense of the reconciliation of God and innocent human suffering is threefold:
1) The virtue defense says that a certain amount of suffering is necessary for humans to become virtuous. The objection to this is that the suffering and killed innocents have no opportunity to become virtuous as a result of their suffering and that it is elitist to suggest that their suffering profits those who can learn from their suffering.
2) The freedom defense says that human freedom is an intrinsic good and, if God chose to give humans freedom, the chance had to be taken that this freedom would be abused. The objection to this is that freedom is not incompatible with being designed always to choose the good. After all, God is free and incapable of choosing evil. Why couldn’t humans have the same sort of freedom?
3) The trial defense says that suffering is part of the trial that humans must pass through in order to achieve salvation. The objection says that where God knows the outcome, there is no real trial. It can also be claimed that if God were truly generous, he could have created humankind and angels in such a state that they would immediately enjoy the beatific vision without a trial.
Little Bessie wants to add that if God designed his creatures, both human and non-human, in a particular way he is the criminal that is ultimately responsible for their evil acts. If God’s purpose in permitting evil is to discipline us, why do the innocent suffer such atrocities?
The answer given to the problem of evil by the book of Job is that God’s wisdom, goodness, and justice so far surpass human understanding that it is improper to ask of God why he permits humans to suffer so.
Pl 258 Aquinas and Anselm
Anselm argues from the definition of God as the being than which no greater can be conceived to his existence in reality, since, if God were merely a mental fiction, we could conceive of a greater being, one existing in reality as well (a $100 in one’s pocket is greater than an idea of $100). The criticism of this argument is that you cannot define anything into existence, as if “existence” were a predicate that is necessarily attached to one being and separated from others. “Existence” is not a predicate at all but a way of applying definitions to things in reality. Beings do not have existence. When we say that something exists we are merely saying that it is real rather than fictional, not that it has a property that a fictional being lacks.
Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God all presuppose a distinction that Aquinas borrowed from Aristotle: every created being has the potential (called “potency”) to acquire certain acts or perfections (called “act”). In the essential order, potency is called essence and acts are called accidents. Thus, a human could acquire a tan, weight, a tattoo, a shaved head, etc. without changing his/her essence. In the existential order, essence is in potency to the act of existence, since a possible being only becomes an actual being by acquiring the act of existence. This distinction between potency and act is the guiding principle behind all of Aquinas’ proofs.
The first proof argues that motion as a change from potency (being unmoved) to act (being in motion) can only take place by reason of a being already in act, and that ultimately the sequence can only be explained in terms of a being who has no potency but is always in act, and that being Aquinas calls God.
The second proof argues that every effect requires a cause and that ultimately every effect in the world can be explained by appealing to an Uncaused Cause, which is not also an effect, and that would be God.
The third proof argues that every possible being (one that could or could not exist) requires a Necessary Being (one that could not not exist) to bring it from potency to act, and that Necessary Being is God.
The fourth proof argues that there are grades of being among limited beings, such that those with less potency and more act of existence have more being, truth, goodness, and beauty than lower beings, but that all beings require a being unlimited by potency to explain their limited being, and that Highest Being is God.
The fifth proof argues that design requires an intelligent designer and that the design of the universe cannot be explained by human intelligence but requires an Intelligent Designer who was not himself designed.
The objections to these arguments rest on the notion that potency and act are not intrinsic properties of beings. Existence, even though it is a noun grammatically, does not name an act or intrinsic property that real beings have and unreal beings lack. Rather, when we say that something exists, we are not adding a property to that thing but we are saying that it is real rather than illusory or fictional. Causal relations among beings can change those beings, but no being acquires or loses an act of existence.
Applying this to Aquinas’ arguments, we can see that, though it is true that every effect requires a cause, there is no evidence that the universe is an effect. The original cosmic soup could always have existed (after all, theists claim that God is not an effect: what prevents the non theist from saying that there is no evidence that the universe is an effect, since we cannot step outside the universe to see its causal relations to something else.
In like fashion, though instances of design require an intelligent designer, there is no evidence that the universe, other than human made products, is designed. To say that is to fail to make a distinction between artificial regularities—one’s brought from a natural environment and given an artificial arrangement, such as a watch, which would require an intentional being to produce—and natural regularities—ones we would expect from natural beings because that is just the way they are, without needing an intentional being for their explanation.
It must be added that it is also true that there is no evidence that the universe is not an effect or designed. However, in cases of doubt the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim.
Pl 258 Homnick and Hook
Rabbi Homnick, in response to a story written about Sidney Hook in which Hook comments on religious faith, upbraids Hook for failing to see that all physical things are composed and whatever has physical components must be put together by someone non-physical. This someone, Homnick argues, is God. In defense of God’s “justice” in the light of the Holocaust, Homnick says that there is no requirement that a transcendent being be “just.” Besides, Homnick says, the justice that Hook requires is purely subjective, which means that we humans are subjecting God to our standards of justice. God far surpasses human notions of justice. As for the Holocaust itself, Homnick attributes divine punishment to the fact that the Jews who suffered in the Holocaust had strayed from the teachings of the Torah. Jewish children are extensions of their parents until they become of age and therefore share in the benefits and mishaps that befall their parents. Since the reward promised by revelation is great, Homnick argues, the suffering that is the result of the exercise of human freedom must be great as well, so that the reward promised by G-d may be seen as a glorious triumph over a horrible threat.
Sidney Hook in reply to Homnick says that Homnick fails to prove his major assumption about physical beings. It is not evident, says Hook, that anything that has physical components had to be composed by something non-physical. Many human products of physical components like cars and watches were composed by humans; but there is no evidence that the original components of the universe had to have a non-physical origin. They could always have existed with their physical dynamics of combination and recombination. With regard to God’s justice, Hook says that Homnick’s claim that divine justice transcends human understanding takes God out of the realm of ordinary moral discourse. We cannot attribute any moral qualities to God—such as goodness, love, wisdom, etc.—if these predicates do not make our ordinary human discriminations. Thus, Hook argues, to say that the Holocaust is just not only offends our sense of moral discourse but it visits on those many Jews who were faithful to the Torah and whose children were innocent of sin the same divine punishment that offensively seems to be required to keep the divine cosmic balance.