tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody) (08/04/85)
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Here's a passage from a recent posting by Rich Rosen:
(begin)
No wonder philosophers can't agree on anything. They have no idea what
the next philosopher is talking about. Perhaps they could learn a little
something about rigorous definition before engagin in discussion or analysis.
Two people can't analyze a phenomenon and come to conclusions if they're
both operating on different notions of what the phenomenon is.
--
Anything's possible, but only a few things actually happen.
Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr
(end)
There is something extraordinarily wrongheaded about this account of
what philosophy is, is not, or should be. First, it is not the case
that philosophers "can't agree on anything." It is true that consensus
is rare when it comes to final solutions of longstanding philosophical
problems. There is, however, a fair amount of consensus about what was
wrong with certain conspicuous philosophical contributions. Almost all
contemporary philosophers agree, for example, that the logical
positivist's Verification Principle is not tenable as it was originally
put forward by philosophers in the Vienna Circle. Philosophers do not
(yet) agree on whether any modified version of it is tenable.
"They have no idea what the next philosopher is talking about," Rich
claims. This may sometimes be true, but when it is true it is often
because of a refusal to attempt to understand what another philosopher
is saying. This is bad philosophy, but it happens.
"Two people can't analyze a phenomenon and come to conclusions if
they're both operating on different notions of what the phenomenon is."
But what if the purpose of the analysis is precisely to come to
understand what the phenomenon is? I have quoted Rusell before in this
newsgroup as saying that the important definitions are the *goal* of
philosophy, not its starting point. Now, it is indeed important to
define as clearly as possible all of the terms that one uses. It is
also important to call attention to terms that one might be using
idiosyncratically. Having done so, it is a significant and worthwhile
contribution to *arrive* at a definition.
Many philosophical problems have the following genesis: There is some
term, or group of terms, in "natural language" that seem to be
important, but nevertheless resist an easy account in terms of the
necessary and sufficient conditions for the applicability of that term.
It often turns out, after analysis, that these terms are, as they stand,
just vague. "Vague", here, means this: the terms have several
meanings, and there are no clear rules or conventions governing which
meanings apply in which contexts. The first philosophical task is to
distinguish and catalogue these meanings. So, the philosophers asks
questions such as: "What kinds of things does the average person use the
word 'free' to express?" "Do these things have very much to do with
what philosophers have traditionally been interested in?" "What kinds
of things do *philosophers* use the word 'free' for?" And so on.
A fair amount of progress, and *agreement*, can be gotten with these
questions. Some philosophers (e.g., Wittgenstein) have claimed that
this sort of thing exhausts the usefulness of philosophy. If one
disagrees with Wittgenstein, one then goes on to pose a new set of
questions, such as: "What definition of 'free' best captures what might
be called the 'deepest' meaning of free?" "How can the concept of
freedom, in all its rich vagueness, *best* be analyzed and
disambiguated?" "What conception of freedom is most consistent with the
rest of our conceptual scheme?" Things like that. Then the philosopher
proposes some definitions, defends their clarity, consistency and
utility, and everybody fights about it, and so it goes. This is
philosophy. Nobody is foolish enough to suppose that the dictionary can
provide the sought-for answers. That is not what dictionaries are for.
Nobody since Spinoza has taken seriously the notion that philosophy
should be modeled on Euclid's *Elements*, proceeding from fixed
definitions and axioms to deductively entailed theorems. Science
doesn't work that way, either. Definitions are provisional,
operational, or missing altogether. Physics just *is* the ongoing
attempt to define "substance", "energy" and the like.
Now, Rich Rosen has asserted repeatedly, and energetically that free
will -- understood as an acausal faculty of human choice -- does not
exist. Which of the following would he accept?
(1) "'free will'='acausal faculty of choice'" reflects the common,
"layperson's" understanding.
(2) "'free will'='acausal faculty of choice'" reflects the only
philosophically conspicuous understanding of the term.
(3) "'free will'='acausal faculty of choice'" is the only possible,
logically intelligible definition.
(4) Whenever people have said "free will", they have only meant one
thing.
(5) "Free will" must be defined in such a way as to entail that it does
not exist.
Well, all five propositions are false. There is no "layperson's"
account of free will, because this is just not a term that is useful in
most extra-academic contexts. People generally use 'free' as 'not
constrained by external forces', such as chains, etc. This may or may
not be philosophically useful.
Does Rich Rosen realize that the notion of a causally determined
universe, in which all events are predictable according to fixed general
regularities, is a *much* younger one than the notion of free will. It
is, therefore, historically impossible that the only thing that 'free
will' can ever have meant to anyone is what Rich Rosen says it must
mean. And anyway, David Hume (1711-1776) expliticly rejected Rosen's
incompatibilist definition with some quite powerful arguments. Does
Rosen want to claim that Hume is not a significant figure in the history
of philosophy? [Note: I am not using Hume as an authority to settle
the dispute, only to challenge Rosen's claim that the history of
philosphy somehow offers a univocal definition of 'free will'.]
Since Rich Rosen has argued that free will is unintelligible, he must
himself reject proposition (3). I think that the falsity of (4) is
evident to anyone who reads this newsgroup. And (5) is perverse.
So, let's get on with it.
Todd Moody {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody
Philosophy Department
St. Joseph's U.
Philadelphia, PA 19131 "Whatever it is, I'm against it."