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by Kevin Currie-Knight
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Sophie Grace Chappell (Open University) talks with Kevin (East Carolina University) about her book Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience. (Oxford: 2022) They talk about what epiphanies are, why they should count as a type of reason (often more persuasive than more formal conceptions of reason), and why philosophers should better appreciate their role in everyday moral life.
00:00 Intros, and Why Sophie Teaches at the Open University 5:37 – What Are Epiphanies and Why Are They Important to Philosophy? 16:06 – How Moral Experience and Thinking Work in the Real World 21:08 – Epiphanic Experience, Empathy, and the Debate Over Abortion Rights 29:03 – Epiphanies and Moral Monism, Relativism and (Sophie’s Preference) Pluralism 47:18 – Why Are Most Philosophers Reluctant to Acknowledge “Noncognitive” Factors in Moral Life?
by Mark English
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Patriotism comes in many shapes and sizes. It remains a key factor in politics and international relations. In this episode, Mark English continues his reflections on patriotism and nationalism, referring to a curious and revealing passage from Margery Allingham’s 1941 novel, Traitor’s Purse. Reference is also made to criticisms of previously-expressed views on the Ukraine conflict and current U.S. foreign policy.
By Daniel A. Kaufman
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[1] We need to distinguish between philosophy and what people have called philosophy. Physics is not philosophy and neither is biology, yet once, they — and the rest of the natural sciences — went under the name “natural philosophy.”
[2] I would identify philosophy with a set of tools and techniques, not with any particular subject matter. Specifically: philosophy addresses a broad variety of subjects, via the careful, exacting use of logical, conceptual, and linguistic analysis.
[3] I would add, further, that philosophy — at least in its mainline incarnations — addresses these subjects from the position of two fundamental assumptions: (a) that the defining human quality is reason; and (b) that the human ideal is to think and act under the guidance of reason. [i]
[4] Many have proposed “the search for understanding” as a definition of philosophy. This strikes me as being either trivially true and thus, uninteresting — every intellectual and creative endeavor aims at this, at some level — or substantially false. Certainly the claim that philosophy is an empirical science is false, if what one means by ‘empirical science’ is the development of empirically testable theories that explain and predict natural phenomena. That some philosophers made lucky — or educated — guesses that later were confirmed by genuine scientific enquiry does not render those guesses scientific, and we must remember just how many more of these sorts of guesses turned out to be complete rubbish. (The word ‘splenetic’, for example, has its origins in the fact that ancient thinkers believed the spleen was responsible for the emotion of anger.)
None of this means that a person who does philosophy cannot also engage in genuine scientific investigation (Descartes comes to mind). The point simply is that science and philosophy are different activities, employing different tools and techniques.
[5] An older conception of philosophy, most identified with antiquity, characterizes it as “the love of wisdom.” ‘Love’ is endlessly and fruitlessly debatable, but I doubt whether even “the pursuit of wisdom” is accurate. Certainly, philosophers since the Enlightenment (4oo hundred years ago at this point) have treated philosophy much more as the pursuit of knowledge than of wisdom, and given that wisdom is a product of the intersection of experience, intelligence, and a prudential temperament, it isn’t at all obvious why philosophers should be likelier to acquire it than anyone else. (A survey of the professional and public behavior of philosophers today suggests strongly that they are not.) [ii]
[6] In my view, philosophy’s primary role — and really the only role, for which it is well-suited, given its distinctive tools, techniques, and assumptions — is to clarify, and while this may sometimes involve criticizing faulty reasoning, it need not. Here are just two examples of some ways in which philosophy can clarify:
–With respect to scientific explanation, philosophy addresses the question of what is meant by ‘explanation’ and thus, can aid us in clarifying the precise sense in which scientific theories explain, while also identifying those senses in which it does not.
–With respect to psychology, philosophy addresses the question of how we commonly understand words like ‘mind’, ‘thought’, and ‘consciousness’, which then makes it possible to clarify the relationship between these notions and what psychologists and neuroscientists are discovering about the human brain and nervous system. One thing this does is problematize the statement “The mind is the brain,” which is clarifying, insofar as this formula has regrettably become quite common, even in philosophy itself.
Philosophy can also clarify by uncovering hidden assumptions and premises, which often reveal a discipline’s or inquiry’s limits. Descartes uncovered the extent to which the empirical grounds for belief can only function as grounds, if one accepts a number of hidden assumptions that themselves lack any rational warrant. (Seeing a pencil only serves as grounds for thinking that there is a pencil, if one assumes one’s perception is veridical which, of course, it may not be. And the grounds for thinking that one’s perception — or thinking otherwise — is veridical can only be based in further perception or thinking, which obviously is unhelpful.) [iii]
[7] Some want to say that philosophy is especially well suited to addressing normative questions, whether in the areas of art, morality, or politics. Indeed, some have even gone so far as to claim that aside from metaphysics, value and obligation are the only other genuinely philosophical subjects: that is, subjects that properly belong, first and foremost, to philosophy, as opposed to all the “philosophies of x,” in which philosophy’s role is fundamentally second-order.
I want to resist both of these claims. Though it puts me in a minority of philosophers, I am of the view that philosophy is actually quite poorly equipped to address normative questions. The short reason is that value and valuation belong to the affective sensibility, rather than the intellect, which is why both Aristotle and Hume maintained that we can only reason about means, never about ends, and why H.A. Prichard demonstrated (with devastating brevity) that one can never prove or otherwise rationally justify an obligation or duty. [iv]
The longer reason is that mainline philosophy’s fetishization of reason has caused it to misunderstand the nature of both value and obligation. One effect of this has been that virtually every mainline moral theory places a sterile disinterestedness at the heart of moral life, telling us that our duties and obligations to complete strangers — and even more absurdly, non-human animals — are as powerful and binding as those to our closest relatives, dearest friends, and lovers. [v] Another effect has been an obsession with moral consistency, one that is reflected in unipolar or “single-valence” ethical theories, which contradict the reality that our most fundamental intuitions regarding value are conflicted. [vi]The result is that while an awful lot of moral hectoring and posturing goes on, in ethics — and especially, applied ethics — very little of it has any effect on actual moral life, not even on the lives of the hectoring, posturing ethicists themselves. Peter Singer, for example, perhaps the most well-known among philosophy’s moral scolds (or saints, depending on how you feel about him), has been pressed on the matter of his trust-fund children, ritzy appointment at Princeton, and the thousands upon thousands of dollars he spent on his late mother’s Alzheimer’s care. Even in Singer, apparently, Utilitarianism’s standing, relative to other considerations, is somewhat meager.
[8] Philosophy is at its best when it is in a clarifying and critical mode. It is at its worst, when it creates theories, doctrines, and rules. I believe that people intuitively understand this: notice that when one leaves the upper echelons of the academy and descends to the general education curriculum — and beyond the academy, to the world of work –philosophy is valued primarily for its contribution to critical thinking and not for any knowledge or moral improvement that it provides.
We should not underestimate the value of this contribution. We live in a civilization awash with bad information, deceitful and manipulative communications, and outright lies and propaganda. Disturbingly, this malicious writing and speech is not only identifiable with crooks, con-men, despots, and other obvious villains: Professionally trained psychologists use their expertise to advise companies on how to manipulate us into spending enormous sums of money, on what are often harmful products and services; religious leaders make appeals to the Bible and to morality in order to convince us to that we should shun our relatives, friends, and neighbors who may be gay, seeking an abortion, or who are atheists; and scientists deploy the tremendous authority they enjoy with the public, in order to advance their own personal and political agendas, often with respect to subjects they know little to nothing about.
So, there is an urgent need for tough criticism; for questioning; for examining; and for doubting, and these are the things at which philosophy excels. But it is not only in the battle against intellectual, commercial, and political deception, manipulation, and fraud that these modalities are crucial. They are necessary to keep a check on intellectual overreaching, especially in science, but also in philosophy and other areas. When a physicist announces that physics has answered one of the longest, outstanding human questions, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (as Lawrence Krauss claimed in his book, A Universe from Nothing), it takes careful, rigorous questioning to reveal that the claim is wildly overstated.
Notes
[i] I went into greater depth on mainline philosophy’s small ‘r’ rationalism, here. https://theelectricagora.com/2016/02/28/excessive-reason/
[ii] I wrote about the relationship of philosophy to wisdom, here. https://philpapers.org/rec/KAUKWA
[iv] I explored this matter in more depth, here. https://theelectricagora.com/2022/05/06/a-foolish-impartiality-is-the-hobgoblin-of-morality/
[vi] https://theelectricagora.com/2021/07/02/morality-and-distance/
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