Word of the Week: Foundationalism

Meet Susan Haack - a new foundationalist.

Are there secure foundations to knowledge? 'Foundationalism' is a theory of knowledge, or how we justify our beliefs. Foundationalists think all beliefs ultimately get their justification from a set of very basic beliefs or sensory states which are the 'foundations' of knowledge. Otherwise, there'd be no foundation, and to fully justify any claim we'd have to say 'A is the case, because B, because C, because D', and so on until infinity! Foundationalists think infinite justification is absurd, so they prefer to base knowledge claims upon a secure foundation - a bit like building a house on rock, not on sand...

So there ought to be secure foundations for knowledge. But it is difficult to see what these foundations really are. The general form of foundationalism seems to be acceptable, but it is difficult to point to the content of any particular theory. There are secure foundations out there, but we don't really know what they are! Perhaps a moderate solution is needed: we might admit that Susan Haack is right in embracing 'foundherentism', which combines the 'foundationalist' insight with the 'coherentist' view that beliefs can justify each other without resting solely on a bedrock of 'basic' beliefs which don't need further justification. Foundationalists think knowledge is like a pyramid. Coherentists think it's like a web: not only does basic belief B justify derivative belief D, but D also can justify B and vice versa - within webs of reinforcing beliefs. Perhaps by 'secure' foundations we don't mean an indubitable foundation but some kind of sound basis for knowledge which can be strengthened by coherence relations and, perhaps, reliable processes too. Contrary to Descartes' assertion that we can all be dead certain of certain beliefs - e.g., 'I exist' and 'God exists' - maybe knowledge has somewhat weaker, but still significant, foundations. The alternative is the scepticism which results from rejecting basic beliefs.

To start with, let's consider epistemic foundationalism - the view that there must be some foundations to knowledge, whatever they are. I embrace epistemic foundationalism because the alternatives are pretty bad. The argument for epistemic foundationalism is the so-called 'regress argument'. Richard Fumerton uses the Principle of Inferential Justification, which states that: S's belief that P on basis E is justified if (1) S's belief that E is justified and (2) S's belief that E makes probable P is itself justified. Let's take (1) first, and return to (2) later. 

For S's belief that E to be justified, S must belief some other proposition - E1, say - which must also be justified. And so on. So we can see that part (1) of Fumerton's simple principle leads us to regress: the justified belief that E1 depends on another proposition E2, then another proposition E3, and so on until infinity. According to the regress argument for the view that knowledge has foundations, a contradiction is generated. On the one hand, regress leads us into there being an infinity of prior justifications for any given belief. On the other hand, it seems implausible that there can exist such an infinite regress! How can finite minds ever comprehend infinite chains of reasons? What's more, if the infinite chain were completed, it would no longer be infinite! The obvious way of resolving this dilemma is by embracing the claim that some knowledge is non-inferential - i.e., not inferred from any other belief. This non-inferential knowledge is therefore foundational. It either justifies itself or doesn't need justification: these are the foundations you're looking for! We don't know exactly what they are, mind you. All that Fumerton's argument proves is that there must be foundations of some kind - otherwise knowledge as we understand it is impossible.

But infinitists such as Peter Klein think infinite regress is perfectly reasonable: we can have infinite chains of justification that enable us to really have 'knowledge'. He rejects one alternative - 'coherentism' - on the grounds that it leads to circularity. Coherentists say that S's belief that P is justified if S's whole system of beliefs is justified by the coherence of the relations between the beliefs in that system - like a spider's web. But this suggests that it's possible for P to justify itself - albeit indirectly - by a chain of reasons which loops back on P. But Klein thinks we should all accept the Principle of Avoiding Circularity: circular reasoning is unreasonable. So we should reject pure coherentism. (I'll return to Haack's modified version - 'foundherentism' - later.) Also, Klein rejects foundationalism, because he thinks we should all accept the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness, which stops knowledge from having arbitrary foundations that have no justification. In Klein's view, to argue for the view that knowledge has secure foundations is like arguing for the view that one can simply believe something without having any good reason for believing it - so one foundationalist cannot challenge another if their arbitrary foundations differ! For instance, foundationalist Bertrand Russell thinks sense data - or sensory states, like a perception of a chair - are basic reasons for believing propositions such as 'There's a chair over there!'. But religious foundationalists like Alvin Plantinga think that a religious believer's belief is God is foundational, or basic. But both these foundations might be arbitrary - after all, a religious believer's so-called 'basic' belief that God exists is not likely to convince an atheist who has different 'foundations' to their knowledge. So if you want to avoid arbitrariness and circularity, Klein wants you to embrace infinitism!

Infinitism, however, isn't really that convincing. Look back at condition (2) of Fumerton's Principle of Inferential Justification: S's first belief that P on basis E is justified IF S's further belief, 'E makes probable P', is itself justified. Like (1), this leads to regress. If one's belief that it will rain tomorrow (P) is justified by your belief that the Met Office said so (E) and your further belief that what the Met Office says is reliable (i.e., E makes probable P), one would also need a reason for thinking that reliability itself is a good reason for believing reports!  You would need the further belief, which also requires justification, such as 'The Met Office's reliability is a justification for my believing its predictions'. But what is this the case? And so on, and so on. So (1) leads to regress, (2) leads to regress, and (2) also leads to an infinite number of infinitely long chains of reasons! Even if infinitism is not incoherent, it's surely absurd. As Carl Ginet points out, '[i]nference cannot originate justification, it can only transfer it' from one belief to the next. And as Jonathan Dancy argues, '[j]ustification by inference is conditional justification only'. To argue on the basis of inference from one belief to another presupposes that the inferential relation itself is justified - which at some point must require some kind of foundation, such as the basic belief that the inductive principle (inferring generalisations from observations) is valid. If one doesn't have any foundations, one doesn't have justification - infinitism cannot originate justification, it can only transfer it. 

So what are the foundations? Laurence BonJour thinks logical beliefs like 'anything deduced from a true proposition is true' (Bertrand Russell's example) are foundational. They are the basis for inference. This seems reasonable - without certain basic logical beliefs, in maths or in scientific principles, we can't really go about making justifiable inferences about, well, anything. But what makes these beliefs justified? Well, if they're basic, they don't require further justification! But perhaps what we mean is not 'they don't require further justification at all', but 'they don't require further justification of the usual kind'. They require special justification, which might still allow them to be foundational - or not requiring normal justification. They might be arrived at by reliable processes. As Carruthers (1992) argues, the means by which 'one's belief comes to be innate is reliable' - or generated by a process which tends to generate true beliefs. Our cognitive processes must be reliable for epistemic foundations to be secure. So it seems even self-evidence principles like 'The rules of addition are valid' need to be based on reliable cognitive processes. They are still strictly foundational, but they're not as secure as we once thought. Their security depends on processes outside of them. Beliefs derive their full warrant from external (cognitive) processes, not just internal justifications. Underneath the superficial security of foundational beliefs lie important reliable processes. 

Another possible foundation is sense-data: e.g., the sense-datum of a table. We base our knowledge on such sense-data, which don't need justifying. They're just experiences which form the basis of our justified beliefs. But as BonJour notes, this kind of foundationalism is problematic. Either sense-data assert that something exists or they don't. If they don't, then how could they justify beliefs which do make such assertions? On the other hand, if a sense-datum of a table can assert that the table exists, then what makes this assertion justified? The assertive representational content itself - not the sense-data - is doing the justification! Sense-data can't justify beliefs, because either they don't have the necessary conceptual content to do so, or they implicitly contain beliefs about existence which are the real sources of justification. These implicit beliefs (e.g., the belief that 'There's a table there' whenever we see, or have a sense-datum of, a table) surely need further justification. But this justification needs yet another justification, and so on, until we get to something basic. The alternative is infinite regress. What's certain is that sense data are not the secure foundations we're looking for.

Susan Haack wants us to embrace a synthesis. Foundations can't be indubitable - or beyond doubt. But they can be secure enough to provide reasons for believing non-basic beliefs. We may not have indubitable knowledge in sense-datum-like 'S-states'. But we can have some kind of knowledge in such states, mutually supported by cohering 'C-evidence' which ascribes S-states to a subject. Basic beliefs can be justified not just by themselves but at least in part by their coherence relations with other beliefs. Justification goes up (from basic beliefs to non-basic beliefs) and back the way down again (as non-basic beliefs cohere with one another, and support the basic beliefs on which they rely). Basic beliefs justify non-basic beliefs, but then non-basic beliefs justify each other through their coherence (consistency or mutual derivability). These non-basic beliefs can then lend further support to the basic beliefs - in a virtuous circle of foundherentist justification! A problem with Haack's account is how basic beliefs can derive any justification at all from coherence with non-basic beliefs independently of the justification originated from basic beliefs. If basic beliefs have already done the justifying of non-basic beliefs, isn't non-basic beliefs' supporting basic beliefs just circular? Maybe, but maybe not: as Peirce once argued, these special chains of justification might be relations of 'mutual support', not simple 'circularity'. But as an alternative to the extremes of logical and sense-datum foundationalism, Haack's foundherentism is at least a promising alternative. As Haack puts it: foundherentism, 'without sacrificing objectivity, acknowledges something of how complex and confusing evidence can be'. Foundherentism might someday solve the dilemma of foundationalism's good form but poor content.

So it seems there must be some foundations for knowledge if our beliefs are to be justified. But these foundations might not be indubitable - they might rely on non-basic beliefs (as Haack claims) or on reliable cognitive processes (as Carruthers thinks). We can't definitely point to particular foundations, and we can't claim these foundations are totally secure. We can't be certain that knowledge has secure foundations. But in order to have justification at all, it seems there must be some kind of foundation - however secure that foundation may be.

Image sourced from Creative Commons.

Word of the Day: Time

A moment in time (Creative Commons)

Political times are different from other times. For example, thermodynamic time is irreversible: entropy (roughly: a measure of energy dispersal or disorderliness) never decreases in a 'closed' system (e.g., the universe, or a very good thermos flask). In these systems, entropy goes up and up, but never down. So thermodynamic time isn't that different from psychological time - it just keeps moving on, never stopping, never reversing. You can't turn back the universe's clock.

But political times are often different from this version of time. (Perhaps not all times, but I'm no physicist - and certainly no quantum mechanic!). Most people see time as a linear progression, or at least as an irreversible trajectory ('past, the point of no return...', with apologies to Andrew Lloyd Weber). But for others, political time goes up, down, and back round again... Or should I say political times?

In this post, I take us through three different versions of political time: linear, cyclical, and plural. The first is a bit like thermodynamic time, but the second and third are different. I think the pluralist interpretation of time is best for our diverse world.

'Political time is a line'

For many political thinkers, admittedly, time is a line. And it's irreversible. A bit like thermodynamic time. There is a 'right' and 'wrong' side of history - like a ladder rising into heaven, with anything low being 'backward' and anything high 'advanced' and 'developed'. Time is progress. Both Marxists and liberals often think this way. Their common ancestor is Hegel, for whom history was a progression of ideas ('theses') being challenged by other ones ('antitheses'), from which improved 'syntheses' were formed which drew on the advantages, while casting away the drawbacks, of both thesis and antithesis. History culminated in an Absolute Idea, superior to all other ideas thanks to its constituting the synthesis of a long dialectical process. Hegel construed this 'end of history' as Napoleonic good government. So history ended with the invasion of Jena by Napoleon's forces in 1806. But Karl Marx thought Hegel neglected the continuing economic struggles after Jena between proletarians and bourgeoisie, which would lead to the challenging of capitalism from class antitheses. This new dialectic would lead to a different end of history: communism (after taking socialism as a further stepping-stone). For political scientist Francis Fukuyama, however, Hegel was more accurate than Marx: history was the culmination not of a dialectic of material struggles (as Marx suggested) but of a dialectic of ideational clashes (as Hegel contended). The final clash was the Cold War, which ended in the replacement of communism in eastern Europe with some form of democratic capitalism. Democratic capitalism, for Fukuyama, was the 'final form of human government' - the end of history, if 'history' is taken to be the progression of ideas until they reach a utopian end-point.

But despite their disagreements, Hegel, Marx and Fukuyama concur on this: history is a progression of contradictory ideas, and the end of history will eliminate these contradictions for good in a worldly utopia - be it Napoleonic-style rule, communism, or democratic capitalism. Time is a line - or, more specifically, a ladder - rising from the dark depths of the First Man of prehistory to the Last Man of modernity. Life for the First Man is 'nasty, brutish and short' (in Hobbes's words), but life for the Last Man is prosperous, free, and long. Time is a line - and it's pointed towards the sky.

'Political time is a loop'

But for many political scientists, political time doesn't go up and up. It goes down and comes back round again. Time is cyclical, not linear. For James Madison, the American republic was less of an 'end of history' than a modest return to the republican virtues of antiquity. For Donald Trump, the ideal America is to be sought some time in the past, which we must rise back up to meet, in order to 'make America great again'. For sociologist Saskia Sassen, we must return to the 'logic of inclusion' under the Keynesian forms of democratic capitalism practised between 1945 and 1978, rejecting the 'logic of exclusion' and 'expulsion' which has dominated since then. Geographer David Harvey similarly scorns the 'neoliberal' phase of capitalism. So we might need to seek out alternatives in the past, from the movements of indigenous people in Ecuador (and their ecological 'buen vivir' thinking) to the social democracy of the post-war era. Finally, for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz, the immediate post-war phase of regulated capitalism was better than the twenty-first century's phase of deregulated capitalism. For all these thinkers, Marx and Hegel are wrong to think that political time doesn't 'reverse'. Because time is not a line. It's a loop. Make {{insert a given period in the past two centuries}} great again!

'Political times have many shapes'

Both the linear and cyclical interpretations of time are, in my judgment, misled. Political time, of course, is itself a construct of our imaginations - but this is not my grounds for criticism. Religion, nation, and human rights are all constructs of our imagination - but that doesn't mean we should reject religion, nation, and human rights! Political time, similarly, is a construct we can use to look at how our political theories view historical change through time. Most political projects have some moralised version of time - as a line, as a loop, or as some other shape (a zig-zag, perhaps?). I do not propose we reject the notion of political times. But I do propose that we reject the singular notion of one political time. Because there are, I think, many political times. 

This doesn't just mean that different people have different opinions on whether things are getting 'better' or 'worse' (see the debate between the optimistic psychologist Steven Pinker and pessimistic intellectual John Gray for more details). I mean that different elements of society - from violence and poverty to life-expectancy and political systems - each have distinct political times. While violence between humans seems to have decreased as a proportion of the total population (as Steven Pinker has meticulously demonstrated), violence against nature has increased exponentially during the 'Anthropocene' (see novelist Amitav Ghosh, journalist Naomi Klein, or theorists Bonneuil and Fressoz for more details). Absolute poverty has decreased, but relative poverty and inequality have increased. We live in a 'high risk, high opportunity' society (as sociologist Anthony Giddens contends). Some things seem to progress towards a brave new world, while others go back to the 'good' or 'bad' old worlds. Some political times seem to be travelling on a trajectory towards a Hegelian Utopia - the political time of life expectancy, for instance, propped up by stabler political and economic systems. But the political times of democracy, socialism, and alternative ideologies are looping, rising, falling, and zig-zagging in myriad ways. There are many political times, depending on your vantage point.

This is not to say that political time is unimportant. It can help us to imagine where we've come from, and where we might be going. But political time is plural. There is no one 'political time', both due to different views and due to different trajectories seen in different aspects in the world today. There are many times, and they have many shapes. The upshot? Politics is many-sided, so we should adapt to each problem in a different way, rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all model to humanity's disparate issues. Political times have many shapes - so should our political choices.

Word of the Week: Duty

Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals in its vernacular German.

Note: This post is about Kant's theory of duty. It can be therefore be read in conjunction with my post on Kant's theory of free will. As with this previous post, in this post everything in purple is part of Kant's theory, whereas everything in orange is what Kant (or other people) judge to be in opposition to his theory

How is duty possible?

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) provided perhaps the most sophisticated account of morality ever created in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and Critique of Practical Reason (1788). The most fundamental and profound aspect of this account was his three-fold theory of duty. According to this, Kant saw being moral as the equivalent to being dutiful. Kant thought that an action is moral, or dutiful, if and only if it originates from:

1. A motive of duty rather than inclination;
2. A will which is autonomous rather than heteronomous;
3. An imperative which is categorical rather than hypothetical.

For Kant, duty is exercised through the pure motive of duty, the autonomous will and the categorical imperative. In order to understand why Kant equates morality with duty, it is worth considering his reasoning behind each of these three ideas. By looking at each step of Kant's reasoning, we may be able to see the word 'duty' in a different light. For the question at the heart of Kant's moral theory is this: how is duty possible? It is this question that leads to Kant's three-part answer, starting with the supreme motive of morality.

1) The Motive of Duty

Kant thought that all moral actions must be motivated by duty, rather than inclination. Thus Kant's theory is 'deontological' (coming from the Greek word deon, or duty), rather than 'teleological' (coming from the Greek word telos, or purpose). Deontology emphasises duty, whereas teleology, to which Kant is opposed, emphasises the purpose of actions in fulfilling an inclination, such as pleasure. One can think of this distinction between duty and inclination as comparable to the distinction between knowledge obtained a priori versus knowledge obtained a posteriori. Knowledge obtained a priori is gained prior to experience. For instance, it doesn't matter how many times you see 5 bananas and 7 more bananas equalling a total of 12 bananas. For Kant, '5+7=12' is true no matter how many particular instances of that universal law you see. However, knowledge obtained a posteriori is gained from experience, so it could be wrong. For instance, the statement that 'bananas are yellow' is a piece of a posteriori knowledge, since it is gained from seeing, say, 100 bananas being yellow. But as experience is limited, the 101st banana one sees might be not be yellow. It could be a green banana! Thus a priori knowledge is infallible whereas a posteriori knowledge is fallible. The same is true for duty and inclination. 

Being moral, for Kant, is doing something from a universally valid principle, such as acting in a fair and just way. The alternative is to act from inclination, such as self-interest, empathy or any other feeling we may have. Whilst duty is a priori and thus infallible, inclination is a posteriori and thus fallible. A duty is comparable with '5+7=12', which is true regardless of circumstances, whilst an inclination is comparable with 'all bananas are yellow', which may only be true in certain circumstances. Duty tells us what we ought to do in all circumstances, whereas our inclination could be applicable only to certain circumstances. Just because we are inclined to stealing an apple, this does not mean that stealing an apple would be the right thing to do. Duty is rational, whereas inclination is somewhat empirical and, therefore, fallible. Kant gives the example of a greengrocer who refrains from overcharging his customers. The greengrocer is therefore doing a beneficial thing, since the consequence is the greengrocers' customers having more money in their pockets after buying their groceries. So everyone is happier as a result. But Kant does not think that happiness (an inclination) is the be-all-and-end-all. The greengrocer is not moral just on the grounds of the consequences of their actions. Rather, the greengrocer is only moral if they are acting from duty. 

But Kant's greengrocer is only refraining from overcharging his customers because he does not want his customers to go somewhere else to buy their groceries. They're motivated by self-interest (an inclination), rather than respect for their fellow human beings (a duty). In other words, the greengrocer is apparently, but not really, dutiful. They're acting with the duty of acting fairly, but are not acting from that duty, since their real motive is self interest. They're not acting 'from duty', but 'solely from the purposes of self-interest'. Therefore, for Kant at least, you cannot just be like the greengrocer and act with duty, but rather you must act from duty, or for duty's own sake. So even though the greengrocer would not behave any differently if they were acting from duty, there's still a difference for Kant. It doesn't matter what the consequences are - the motive is the important thing. You can't just be empirical about morals - you have to be rational, so you have to think about what is the right thing. Reason, or a priori thinking, is thus the centrepiece of the first layer of Kant's theory of duty.

However, Hegel (1770 - 1831) articulated a problem with this first element of Kant's theory of duty. The problem is that Kant, by emphasising rational duty, forgets about the irrational side of humanity. For Hegel, Kant's concept of duty is too cold. Rather, Hegel contends, our inclinations are just as important as duties, and ought to be so. The organic culture of language, social practices and values is what makes us who we are. Without an inclination towards our family, for instance, we wouldn't have a good society, since societies are built on family values. Therefore, Hegel challenges Kant's favouring of duty over inclinations.

Anticipating Kant's work, David Hume (1711 - 1776) similarly challenged the notion that morality is rational, or a priori. Rather, Hume saw morality as being derived from a posteriori factors, such as inclinations. For Hume, as well as Hegel, duty is in no way superior to inclination, contrary to Kant's belief. Hume noticed that 'reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions'. Therefore, it is not necessarily a bad thing that the greengrocer is motivated by the inclination of self-interest to not overcharge. Hume noticed that self-interest and other inclinations should be used to achieve good outcomes. For neo-Humeans such as Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832), it does not matter whether the motive is from duty or not: all that matters is whether the consequences alleviate pain and maximise pleasure. In other words, whether our actions produce desirable outcomes according to our inclinations is more important than the supposed duty which Kant thinks should motivate them. 

However, Kant responded to these critiques by arguing that duty is exercised through an autonomous, or free, will. In this way, Kant demonstrated that, if the will was free, then motives could and should come from duty. So to see whether Hegel, Hume and Bentham are right, it's worth considering the second layer of Kant's theory of duty.

2) The Autonomous Will

The motive of duty is the only motive, for Kant. Duty, therefore, can be exercised through moral motives. But for moral motives in turn to be possible, they must be exercised through an autonomous, or free, will. Think about it: if the will weren't free, then how could we ever act from duty? If the will weren't free, we would only be able to act from inclinations. Free will, in other words, is the centrepiece of this second layer of Kant's theory of duty, and is what makes the rest of his theory possible. 

Kant contrasts an autonomous will with a heteronomous will. If the will is heteronomous, then it has a heteronomy, or plurality, of possible motives. Such motives are nearly always inclinations, such as self-interest or altruism. In this respect, Kant is anticipating the findings of Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) and his followers that instinct governs our inclinations. Feelings such as altruism are based on what best suits (in modern scientific terms) the propagation of our genes. We have no control over our inclinations, so abiding by inclinations gives us heteronomous wills.

Nevertheless, the will, or the mind making moral decisions, need not be heteronomous. Whilst it most frequently abides by inclinations, when making moral decisions it has the capacity to act autonomously. To act autonomously is to act according to a moral law that I give myself, rather than a moral law that someone else gives me. We can escape the 'causality of nature', which governs the physical world, by postulating a 'causality of freedom', which says that the will is autonomous when it is determined by itself and its own maxims. Inclinations, feelings and all the other possible causes that one can think of tend to be part of the causality of nature, and therefore constitute the heteronomous will. But Kant wants us, in our moral decision-making, to use our autonomous will. In essence, this is the moral equivalent of defying gravity. 

It must be noted that Kant has no problem with the causality of nature. After all, he wrote a whole book about it in 1781 - the Critique of Pure Reason. But it has no place in his theory of duty, which abides by different rules. Morality is a very different game from physics and mathematics. Morality plays by its own rules. This is not to say that morality is totally subjective. Indeed, because we all share the same causality of freedom, we also share the same rationality. This rationality which we all share means that, although we all will come to the same moral conclusions when we're thinking straight, we are all nevertheless autonomous. This is because 'autonomy' doesn't mean 'being a rebel' for Kant. It simply means acting according to the moral law, which is the same for all human beings. 

But Friesdorf et al. (2015) provide some reason to doubt Kant's claim that we all share the same capacity for rational thought and, therefore, autonomy. Their findings hint at 'gender differences in responses to moral dilemmas'. Women, the study found, tended to be more 'deontological', or Kantian, in their approach to moral dilemmas. They would, for instance, think that abiding by the rules of morality is more important than the 'teleological' consequences. (Deontology looks at motives of duty, whereas teleology looks at consequences of actions in fulfilling our inclinations.) Men, however, tended to be less inclined to a Kantian approach, and more inclined to a teleological one. This suggests that we do not all share Kant's rational autonomy.

Moreover, not only is autonomy not the same for everyone, but also 'we have no independent insight into the alleged necessity for presupposing freedom', according to philosopher H.J. Paton (1887 - 1969). There's no real reason why we're free, in other words, and its just an assumption that Kant makes.

However, both Friesdorf and Paton can be countered by relying on the third and final layer of Kant's theory of duty. Whilst the previous two layers give form to morality, this final one gives content to morality. According to this, the idea that we aren't free or that not everyone shares the same rational autonomy can be countered by resorting to the very foundation of the autonomous will and dutiful motives. For duty and autonomy tell us what kind of maxims are moral ones, but they cannot tell us which specific maxims are moral and which are not. So duty is not only exercised through the motive of duty and the autonomous will, but also through the categorical imperative. And it is on the categorical imperative that Kant's theory survives or falls. 

3) The Categorical Imperative

Ultimately, duty is possible through the application of what Kant terms the categorical imperative. By 'categorical', Kant really means 'not hypothetical'. A hypothetical imperative is an imperative with an 'if' clause, e.g. 'If I want to live, then it is imperative that I eat healthily'. But a categorical imperative has no such 'if' clause, because it applies to all situations universally, e.g. 'Live!'

Kant thought that all so-called 'categorical imperatives' can be reduced to a simple 'categorical imperative' with three formulations. The first formulation of this three-fold categorical imperative says, 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law'. It is our duty to follow this imperative, which basically says that we should only do something if we would be happy for that to be done by everyone in all circumstances, as if it were a 'universal law'. So we would be violating our moral duty if we failed to abide by this imperative. Even if we try, we might fall short of the mark in two ways. First, we could, when universalising our maxim, make a contradiction in the law of nature. Suicide is such a contradiction, whose maxim is 'From self-love I make it my principle to shorten my life'. This maxim is contradictory because life is a law of nature, so it is self-contradictory to assert that everyone has the right to commit suicide, since that would make the concept of life redundant. Suicide violates the categorical imperative because, if it were to become a universal law, it would be self-contradictory. So suicide cannot become a universal law. The second way in which one could fail to universalise a maxim is by generating a contradiction in the will. For instance, saying that 'I do not care to contribute anything' to people's welfare would not be a contradiction in the law of nature (as it is perfectly possible for everyone to be nasty to one another). But this wouldn't be something that one would reasonably will to occur. One will always will to be given assistance in need, so it is a contradiction in the will to make selfishness a universal law.

However, Alasdair MacIntyre pointed out that even if we avoid these two failings, we could just create really narrow maxims, which 'will permit me to do what I want while prohibiting others' from similarly acting. One could say that, if one's aircraft crashed on 13 October 1972 in the Andes Mountains, then it is permissible to eat the flesh of the 12 people who died in the crash to stay alive if one survived the crash. This maxim could be made a universal law, and would not be contradictory in any way, since it is so narrow that no contradiction can be found. Therefore, Kant's first formulation falls apart on the grounds that, given suitably narrow maxims, it can be used to justify anything.

Nevertheless, as Michael Sandel has pointed out, the first formulation is only a test, so it doesn't matter if it is not perfect when applied to all maxims. The real categorical imperative, he argues, comes in the second formulation, which says, 'Act in such a way that you always treat humanity [...] never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end'. Therefore, in the Gafgen v. Germany case of 2010 at the European Court of Human Rights, which considering whether it was right for police to use the threat of torture to extract information from child-killer Magnus Gafgen, Kant would have argued that it was wrong to use the threat of torture. By threatening Gafgen with torture in order to extract information from him, police were using Gafgen as a means to an end, rather than as an end in himself. Therefore, the only maxims which are acceptable to Kant are ones which treat humans as ends in themselves. The court, coincidentally, more-or-less upholded the Kantian freedom from torture in their verdict. This is also in accordance with Kant's third formulation of the categorical imperative, which says that one should 'Act as if you were, through your maxims, a law-making member of a kingdom of ends'. In other words, Kant would have said that the threat of torture is always wrong because it is not fitting for law-making individuals: law-making individuals tend to favour universal laws over exceptional verdicts. The fact that Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture means that it is inviolable in any situation, since we should always act as if we were law-makers rather than law-breakers.

But here's my problem with the categorical imperative. It emphasises that humans are ends in themselves, and that moral duty is centred on treating humans as equal. Admittedly, it's good that this means that the will is autonomous, since categorical imperatives are only possible through a free will. But I cannot help but ask: is that all morality is? 

Because if duty just means acting autonomously, in accordance with the categorical imperative, then there's nothing virtuous about promoting intuitively good things like 'happiness'. Happiness, for Kant, is unimportant, because it's an inclination, an example of the heteronomous will, and a hypothetical imperative. To say that torture is wrong because torture promotes pain rather than happiness is not sufficient for Kant. It's not even a consideration, since only rational duty (exercised through a priori motive, an autonomous will and the categorical imperative) is sufficient for making actions moral. 

So Kant cannot, I argue, give a good reason to justify our intuitive belief that happiness is good. Because happiness is a mere inclination, for Kant. All actions supporting happiness are using humans as means to the end of happiness, rather as ends in themselves. But I argue that treating humans as ends in themselves is not in humans' best interests. What is the point of following the law if the world suffers? Increasing happiness and decreasing pain are moral things to do, but Kant does not recognise them as such. 

Indeed, what does treating humans as ends in themselves actually mean? If you are to say, 'respecting their dignity', then that begs the question. Indeed, using G.E. Moore's terminology, it's an 'open', or unanswerable question. Because Kant, I argue, cannot answer it. It is far more reasonable to assert 'happiness' as an end in itself, but Kant instead says that humans are ends in themselves. In brief: Kant's theory treats humans as mystical, free entities, when actually we are feeling, sentimental and empathic individuals whose inclinations bind us together more than anything else. If there is a categorical imperative, then Kant does not have it.

A happy duty?

Kant's theory can be thought of as a step-by-step analysis of what moral duty means. Firstly, to act dutifully is to act from the motive of duty. But to act from the motive of duty presupposes the existence of an autonomous will which can generate such motives. This autonomous will is autonomous by virtue of its following the categorical imperative. Kant comes to a lot of valid conclusions in case studies, many of which I would agree with. But by downplaying the importance of happiness, Kant makes 'end in itself' seem to lack meaning. An end is a valuable goal to which we can strive, such as making humans happier. But for Kant we can only treat humans as ends in themselves, as if humans were metaphysical creatures whose inclinations formed a part of their 'scientific' rather than 'moral' selves. I argue that the desire to achieve happiness and avoid suffering is the most categorical imperative there is, since it treats the happiness of humanity as an end in itself. Perhaps that's what duty really means: improving the welfare of each and every human on Earth, since we all share the same capacity, not necessarily to reason, but to be happy. So, if I were Kant, I would say that an action is moral if it originates from:

1. A motive of duty, which means the inclination toward the collective happiness of humanity;
2. A will that is autonomous, by virtue of its pursuing happiness without external (e.g. governmental or authoritarian) intervention;
3. An imperative which is categorical, by virtue of its treating happiness as an end in itself.

Kant thought that duty was treating humans as ends in themselves. But I think we have a greater duty to treat human happiness as an end in itself. Expanding on this view is a matter for another day.

What do you think?

Word of the Week: Phenomenalism

George Berkeley - the founding father of phenomenalism

Note

This entry follows on from a previous entry on 'realism', which talked about the attitude that we can clearly and distinctly perceive the world as it really is, rather than as Trump wants it to look like! As you'll see, 'phenomenalism' is virtually the opposite. What do you think: are you a realist or phenomenalist? Please give your view in the comments section, and I'll do my best to respond!

Phenomenalism is undoubtedly one of the most radical responses to the problem of perception. In its rejection of the common-sense principles of naïve realism, phenomenalism is second only to idealism in its scepticism of the power of our senses at gaining access to the external world. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage for phenomenalists, who eliminate the problems of realism but at the cost of advancing counter-intuitive assumptions about the nature of perception. I contend that, despite phenomenalism’s clear advantages in contrast with naïve realism, the theory fails to clearly and simply model our sense experience. If phenomenalism is to survive, the theory should either be modified to taken into account its flaws or rejected in favour of one of the less radical solutions to the problem of perception (e.g., Russell’s representative realism). In reaching this conclusion, I shall address the following issues: firstly, the merits of the phenomenalist solution to the problem of perception; secondly, the difficulties with accepting the ‘traditional’ phenomenalism of Berkeley, Mill and Ayer; thirdly, the equally problematic ‘adverbial’ modification to phenomenalism. Then I shall reiterate my belief that phenomenalism, although giving a compelling critique of naïve realism, fails to provide the simplicity that realism, whether naïve or representative, provides.

Firstly, it is worth considering the problem that phenomenalists are trying to solve. Whilst our common-sense notion of perception suggests that, as John McDowell notes, our senses have ‘Openness to the world’ and the ordinary (physical) objects therein, it is clear that this is not always the case. Whilst we would like for our senses to be both open to the primary qualities of objects and aware of their existence apart from our own minds, we do not always have such direct perceptual contact with objects. In illusion, as Paul Snowden and C.D. Broad note, one is not aware of an ordinary object, or objects made up of physical matter. Since the same account of experience must apply to both veridical (correct) and illusory (incorrect or misleading) experiences, the conclusion that one is never perceptually aware of ordinary objects seems inevitable. Moreover, hallucinatory experience of an ordinary (material) object is not a case of awareness of an ordinary object. For instance, if one is dreaming of a flying multi-coloured teddy bear, this does not mean that we are actually aware of a multi-coloured teddy bear; rather, we are only aware of an idea of a teddy bear. As veridical and hallucinatory experiences are to be given the same account, it seems that one is never perceptually aware of ordinary objects in veridical experience, since hallucinatory perception is subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perception. That is, if we are dreaming, we do not necessarily know that we are dreaming, so there is nothing obviously distinguishable between dream and reality. This is the problem of perception: we do not directly perceive ordinary objects in illusions and hallucinations, so we do not directly perceive ordinary objects in veridical experiences either.

Thus the problem of perception leads to a rejection of the common-sense, or naïve, assertion that we directly perceive the world. Phenomenalism attempts to solve this problem by introducing a new theory. Phenomenalists accept the arguments from illusion and hallucination as premises, and move from these premises to the conclusion that, as we do not directly perceive ordinary objects, we must perceive non-ordinary objects. These non-ordinary objects are ideas in our mind. For phenomenalists, these perceptual ideas can be called ‘sense data’, or the immaterial objects of sensation. In this way, we are indubitably and directly acquainted with sense data even when we are not directly acquainted with material ordinary objects. Instead of having awareness of ordinary objects, we are, as G.E. Moore and Howard Robinson contend, aware of non-ordinary sense data. Phenomenalism solves the problem of perception by rejecting naïve, or common-sense, realism, since it accepts the commonality between dreaming and being awake by admitting sense data as the omnipresent objects of perception. The problem of not being aware of ordinary objects does not apply for phenomenalists, since only non-ordinary objects are perceivable. So the chief merit of phenomenalism is its ingenious solution to the problem of perception.

However, the non-ordinary nature of sense data is simultaneously the greatest strength and most fundamental weakness of phenomenalism. George Berkeley unintentionally elucidated this weakness in phenomenalism. As Peter Millican notes, Berkeley read John Locke as saying that secondary qualities, or the qualities within objects which cause sensations in the subject (perceiver), are the sensations themselves. In other words, Berkeley took the phenomenalist position to its logical conclusion of denying the distinction between perceiver and perceived. He therefore viewed all qualities of object, be they primary (e.g., extension, solidity and other quantifiable properties) or secondary (e.g., sight, smell, or other obviously sensory properties), as sensations. Berkeley therefore maintained that a sentence such as ‘I see a camel’ states ‘I see an idea of a camel’ (my example). Hence Berkeley is regarded both as an ‘idealist’ and a ‘phenomenalist’. Objects do not really exist in themselves, because only ideas (sense data) are real for Berkeley. This led Berkeley to a total denial of the material world in favour of the idealist maxim that, regarding objects, ‘their esse is percipi’, or ‘their essence is to be perceived’ and not to exist. This leads to a complete scepticism of all claims to the existence of matter, which controversial amongst materialists (or physicalists) both in Berkeley’s day and today. Matter, it seems, is common sense for most people, and central to the doctrines of thinkers from Aristotle to Russell. Without matter, it is not clear how objects could really exist as simply sensations, since non-ordinary sense data are fleeting, whereas ordinary objects seem to be at least moderately permanent. This, therefore, represents a key problem for Berkeley’s phenomenalism, regarding how a phenomenalist can account for the endurance of objects when unperceived.

Berkeley himself solved this dilemma by postulating the existence of a deity who can perceive objects even when they are not perceived by anyone else. This explains why objects exist when unperceived by humans, since they still exist in the mind of God. As Ronald Knox acknowledged in his lyrical homage to Berkeley, even when a tree in a Quad is unperceived by any living thing, ‘the tree will continue to be, since [it is] observed by yours faithfully, God’. However, this presupposition of the existence of God fails to apply Ockham’s razor somewhat, since the postulation of a deity generates more epistemic assumptions than it explains. Put simply, God is an unnecessary element of a perceptual theory, since the existence of God, as with all things, should not be taken for granted. Therefore, the problem remains as to how phenomenalism explains the fact that material objects, even when unperceived, appear to endure. As Bertrand Russell reminds us, it would seem odd if, upon a cat’s passing from one part of the room to another, having been hidden from our view for some duration of its journey, someone said that the cat vanished. But this is what Berkeley would have to contend without postulating a deity: that the cat, when unperceived, truly vanished and, seemingly by magic, reappeared at another part of the room subsequently. In fact, it is quite clear that the more parsimonious model would accept that the cat, whether as an idea or ordinary object, actually endured. So if the cat endured when unperceived, and if objects in general exist when unperceived, the question remains: what are these objects, or sense data, which exist when unperceived?

J.S. Mill responded to this question by supposing that objects, rather than being physical objects or fleeting ideas, represent enduring possibilities of perception. Objects are indeed material, but matter, for Mill, ‘may be defined [as] a Permanent Possibility of Sensation’. Mill has solved the problem of enduring substance in the very definition of his theory, since matter is defined as ‘something which exists when we are not thinking of it; which existed before we had ever thought and would exist if we were annihilated’. Arguably, this solves the problem of enduring substance without resorting to realist claims about reality, since all we can perceive is a ‘set of appearances’. All properties of objects are, to use Locke’s terminology, ‘secondary’. There are no primary qualities, since such qualities could exist regardless of their ability to cause sensations in us. Secondary qualities, by contrast, are such that they necessarily cause sensations within us, such that ‘all attributes which we ascribe to objects consist in their having power of exciting one or another variety of sensation in our mind’. Only sense data exist for Mill, therefore, since only sense data can be perceived. But sense data are not physical themselves, and nor can we infer from sense data to unobserved non-mental objects. The only realm is the mental, or phenomenal. Nevertheless, Mill’s case is incomplete. He wants to say that objects are simultaneously temporary sense data and enduring possibilities of sense data. This is a paradox which is somewhat lacking in explanation. Mill does not answer the question regarding why, if sense data only temporarily exist in the mind of the perceiver, sense data have the power to reappear whenever observed. His account is therefore paradoxical, as it does not account for why permanent possibilities of sensation are ‘permanent’ or ‘possible’. A realist could just as easily reply that this permanency is derived from objects existing independently of the mind, lending little support to the phenomenalist case.

A.J. Ayer tried to bypass the problem with a different version of phenomenalism—namely, linguistic phenomenalism. Instead of trying to ask what objects are, Ayer asked what our statements about objects were, and thus found a way of dodging Mill’s paradoxes. He argued that ‘every empirical statement about a physical object’ is ‘reducible to a statement, or set of statements, which refer exclusively to sense-data’. Sense data, for Ayer, are not actual, material things. Sense data are Berkeleian ideas, similar to Mill’s permanent possibilities of sensation, but are linguistic rather than factual. Ayer therefore referred to the endurance of unperceived material objects, such as Russell’s disappearing cat, as reducible to a set of linguistic statements about possible sense data. To say that the cat exists when unperceived is to say that, were one in a suitable position, one would have a sense datum of a cat. However, this is complicated by Ayer’s denial of the linguistic significance of matter, since it is not possible to say that one is standing a suitable angle to observe the cat, as this presupposes the existence of ‘I’ and the spatial dimensions necessary for observation to take place. Instead, for Ayer, one must use conditional statements purely about sense data. Applying this to Russell’s cat, one would have to say that, were one to experience a sense datum of oneself being in a certain position, one would have the sense datum of a cat. This, however, makes the laws of physics seem coincidental, since an apple falling to the Earth is reducible to a statement about a sense datum of an apple, followed by a sense datum of an apple in a lower position, followed by a sense datum of an apple on the ground. Apart from being counter to the realist assumptions of science, this also over-complicates all talk about the world, as a phenomenalist can only talk about possible and actual sense data, rather then enduring physical objects. For each physical object, a phenomenalist refers to an infinite number of possible sense data. By failing Ockham’s parsimony (simplicity) test, Ayer’s phenomenalism demonstrates is impracticability.

Moving on to the third and final part of this discussion, it is worth considering the adverbial modification to phenomenalism and its usefulness. The theory is, amongst other things, a response to general problems with traditional phenomenalism, such as Roderick Chisholm’s ‘problem of the speckled hen’. According to this problem, a phenomenalist claims that all statements, including statements about number, are reducible to statements about sense data. However, the statement that a hen has ‘48 speckles’ is not thus reducible, since one’s estimation may be incorrect. The number ‘48’ is qualitatively indistinguishable from the numbers 47, 49 or 50. This forced Ayer into the position of denying the possibility of counting using sense data alone, since inductive inference (or rational thinking outside of mere acquaintance with sense data) is also needed to enumerate things. This has led adverbial phenomenalists to ask whether sense data exist at all, due to their lack of utility in the basic practice of counting. Adverbialists, such as Chisholm, C.G. Ducasse and Ned Block, contend that secondary qualities are instantiated, not as sense data, but as adverbs. These adverbs, as Gilbert Harman notes, are the ‘mental paint’ of perceptual experience, and allow us to perceive without the need for immaterial sense data or material objects. For an adverbial phenomenalist, to say ‘I see a pink gate’ is to say ‘I am seeing pinkly and gately’, since there is no object, be it a non-ordinary sense datum or ordinary object, to be perceived. There is only our experience and its intrinsic qualities, which are analogous to adverbs. However, adverbialism fails on two grounds. Firstly, it cannot explain why objects exist when unperceived, since seeing a pink gate recurrently is analogous to ‘sensing pinkly and gately’ at several different occasions, with total coincidence and no physical necessity. The fact that Russell’s cat reappears after travelling through a tunnel or emerging from a cave is, for an adverbial phenomenalist, a mere coincidence. Secondly, as Frank Jackson notes, to see a brown square and a green triangle is simply ‘sensing brownly and squarely and greenly and triangularly’. But this removes the association between ‘brown’ and square’, such that, on the adverbialist account, a brown square could be mistaken for a green triangle, and a green triangle could be mistaken for a brown square. So adverbialism cannot cope with multiple sensations at once.

Overall, phenomenalism is praiseworthy for its ingenious solution to the problem of perception, since it restricts our perception to non-ordinary (immaterial) phenomena rather than ordinary (material) objects. However, traditional phenomenalism fails at explaining why objects persist when unperceived: Berkeley posits a deity without first providing a coherent argument for such a being; Mill begs the question by failing to explain why sense data are ‘permanent possibilities of sensation’; and Ayer’s linguistic phenomenalism restricts all talk of physics to talk of possible sense data, making Newton’s celebrated laws seem like coincidences rather than the products of necessity (or, as we should say in today’s ‘Quantum age’, at least high probability). The attempt to rescue phenomenalism through adverbialism is similarly brittle when scrutinised properly. All in all, phenomenalism is insufficient at explaining the patterns of our perceptual experience. Perhaps realism should come to the rescue.