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Ratiocination

Hume on Liberty and Necessity


I shall here articulate Hume’s most important contributions to the problem of liberty and necessity (that is: free will and determinism).

For Hume, determinism (`the doctrine of necessity’) is the thesis that everything that happens has a necessitating antecedent cause. And Hume thinks that anyone who understands what cause and effect are should accept this thesis (or at least a formulation restricted only to events involving human action). Here’s why: to say that x necessitates y is just to say that events of the type x falls under are constantly conjoined with events of the type y falls under. And since humans are predictable creatures, these constant conjunctions obtain. That is to say, anytime someone acts, one could find an antecedent cause that in general is constantly conjoined with actions of that sort.

So, properly understood, the doctrine of necessity can't be denied.

Nonetheless, many have thought that our actions aren’t necessitated by anything. We seem to have a `false sensation or seeming experience... of liberty of indifference, in many of our actions.’ Hume has an error theory to explain this (mistaken) judgment. First, the folk are confused about causation. Since they don’t observe (in introspection) the necessary connections between causes and effects, they feel that they’re free in acting. But of course, no one could observe such necessary connections. And thinking this is what causation is betrays confusion. Second, the sense of freedom we’ve got is simply the result of ignorance. If we knew more about our own motives, desires, and inner mental workings, we’d observe constant conjunctions between these event types and the event type our action fell under.

Hume, like Moore, advances a conditional analysis of free will. Free will consists, not in the categorical ability to do otherwise, but in a hypothetical or conditional ability. So Hume might say something like this: S is free with respect to action a iff were S to want to perform a, S would perform a.

From the conditional analysis of free will drops out Hume’s classical compatibilism. For its perfectly consistent given this analysis that determinism be true and that persons are free.

Finally, Hume considers the Moral Responsibility Objection to his position. The objection says that if all actions are necessitated, then no one is morally responsible for what she does. This objection bypasses his analysis of freedom, arguing for the incompatibility of moral responsibility and determinism regardless of whether determinism rules out freedom (it thus has affinities with Peter van Inwagen’s so-called Direct Argument).

Hume responds in two ways. First, the Moral Responsibility Objection is irrelevant. If the doctrine of necessity is true, it’s true no matter how repugnant we find the consequences. Second, moral responsibility in fact requires determinism. The degree to which we’re morally responsible varies directly with the degree to which our actions flow from antecedent character/reason/desire states. Hume offers three examples to show that we associate moral responsibility with determined action (contra the Moral Responsibility Objection). First, we aren’t blamed (or are blamed to a lesser degree) when we act in ignorance. Second, when we act impetuously or without due deliberation, we’re excused. Third, repentance absolves us of blame. The best explanation for these data, Hume says, is that there has to be a strong link between character/reason/desire states and action for moral responsibility to be assigned. And the strongest kind of connection we can posit is one of causation.

Augustine on Illumination


I shall here present Augustine’s arguments for the doctrine of divine ideas and divine illumination.

Augustine is a platonist. That is, he thinks that there are perfect and immutable objects of knowledge in virtue of which ordinary objects have the features they do. But unlike early platonists (and unlike Plato himself, if we may be so bold), Augustine doesn’t think that these perfect and immutable objects transcend literally everything. Rather, Augustine says that they’re ideas in God’s mind. (It is unclear to me whether Augustine thinks that these divine ideas are abstract or concrete in nature).

Augustine’s argument for the doctrine of divine ideas proceeds as follows:


1. All things are made by God for a reason and in accordance with a form
2. If God found his reasons for creation and patterns after which to create outside himself, he would be less than perfect.
3. But God isn’t less than perfect.
4. So God found his reasons for creation and patters after which to create in himself. These men call Forms (ideas).


Premise one follows from Augustine’s platonism, his theism, and a sort of incohate principle of sufficient reason. Things have their properties in virtue of participation in some form. So the act of creation involves God making matter and imposing patterns or ideas into it in accordance with these forms. Premises two and three follows from broadly Anselmian concerns about divine perfection (it was from Augustine, in fact, that Anselm inherited the notion of God as the being than which none greater could be conceived).

Platonists have long faced a problem: if there are immutable and perfect forms and these are the objects of knowledge, how do we get in touch with them? The forms cannot enter into causal relations, after all--so how is it that we know anything at all? Augustine’s doctrine of divine illumination can be seen as a theistic solution to the problem.

The doctrine of divine illumination says that all instances of knowledge involve God revealing or illuminating the object to knowledge to the knower. Knowledge is not a two-place relation holding between objects and knowers, so to speak, but rather a three-place relation holding between objects, knowers, and God himself. His argument for this doctrine looks something like this:


1. The objects of knowledge are perfect and immutable (from platonism).
2. Knowledge requires acquaintance (direct contact).
3. So if we know anything at all (and we do), we’ve had direct acquaintance with perfect and immutable objects of knowledge.
4. Direct acquaintance relations obtain only when the knower acts on the known.
5. But the lower (we humans) cannot act on the higher (perfect and immutable objects of knowledge).
6. And higher than the divine ideas is one thing only: God.
7. So every act of knowing involves God acting on the forms and thereby placing us into direct acquaintance with perfect and immutable objects of knowledge.


Thus illumination. Premise two of this argument is the Principle of Acquaintance. It's worth noting that Plato of the early and middle dialogs probably subscribed to something like it; and it was this commitment which drove him to the doctrine of recollection. I end by noting that Augustine doesn't say much about what the process of illumination consists of--but it's hard to see how he could so do.

The Transcendental Deduction


I here articulate an interpretation of Kant’s famous Transcendental Deduction. My goal shall be to sketch a minimally plausible argument that can be attributed to Kant (with some minimum degree of plausibility). There are two dangers when engaging in this project: on the one hand, I could give a textually faithful rendition of Kant's argument on which the argument turns out to be radically implausible or obviously invalid. On the other hand, I could state an argument which just might be in the text and that's also valid and minimally plausible. I've erred in the direction of this latter danger (as I always try to do when engaging in the history of philosophy--why study arguments that aren't valid or at least minimally plausible?)

I shall first state Kant’s theories of analyticity and transcendental idealism. On my reading, the Transcendental Deduction is a modal argument for the latter.

The Synthetic and Analytic

For Kant, it is acts of judgment which are analytic or synthetic (not the abstract propositions of contemporary metaphysics nor the sentence types or tokens that express them). The things eligible for analyticity and syntheticity are event-like objects--things that happen or occur. It remains unclear whether Kant has in mind event types (so-called `Chisholm events’) or event tokens (so-called `Kim events’).

An analytic judgment occurs iff a connection of subject and predicate is `thought through identity,’ while a synthetic judgment occurs iff a connection of subject and predicate is thought, but not through identity.

(I shall not discuss Kant’s anachronistic theory of a prioricity here, but simply note that he thinks synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. His pet example of this is the judgment that `everything that happens has a cause.’)

Transcendental Idealism

On Kant’s taxonomy, empirical idealism is the conjunction of two theses:

a) The mind is directly acquainted only with objects as they appear to us (roughly: Lockean ideas or medieval phantasms).

b) There are no objects in themselves (roughly: Lockean substrata).

Berkeley accepts both (a) and (b); Hume accepts (a) and (sometimes!) seems to accept (b). Locke accepts (a) and rejects (b); Aristotle, as an empirical realist rejects both (a) and (b).

Transcendental idealists, on the other hand, reject (a) and (b), but not in the manner of Aristotle.

Transcendental Idealism is the thesis that there are subjective conditions grounding the possibility of intelligible experience (and more specifically, the intelligible experience of synthetic a priori knowledge)--and that these conditions obtain. An experience is intelligible iff (roughly) we can make sense of it, which entails among other things that it has a discernible ordering. Subjective conditions here are features about a subject that make possible such experience. It’s not just that these features are necessary conditions of such experience; rather, such experience is possible in virtue of these features. The relation is one of both dependence and entailment.

The Transcendental Deduction

Kant’s Transcendental Deduction is both one and many. One: it’s an argument schema or general strategy of argument. Many: Kant advances many instances of the schema, letting the variables in the schema take as their values different varieties of intelligible experience and different varieties of subjective conditions.

And in fact, one can read Kant as employing two schemata in his Transcendental Deduction. The first is aimed at empirical idealists and empirical realists who accept that there are such things as intelligible experiences. The second is aimed at the skeptic who grants that such intelligible experiences are possible, but withholds judgment as to their actuality. I shall concentrate on the first schema in the sequel.

The general strategy of the Transcendental Deduction is to identify some experience and then show some necessary conditions that ground this experience. Given that experience happens, it follows then that the necessary conditions obtain. QED.

Finally, the Transcendental Deduction is a modal argument, employing the notions of possibility and necessity.

In the sequel, let x be a kind of intelligible experience, let p be transcendental idealism with respect to x, and let q be the thesis that someone (a thinker like us) has an intelligible experience of kind x.

Schema the First:

1. Necessarily, if not-p, then not-q.
2. q
3. p (from 1 and 2, modus tollens/double negation)

Note that this argument has a strong premise; it assumes that intelligible experience of a particular sort is actual. The skeptic, thus, won’t be convinced by any argument of this form, since she withholds judgment about its second premise. Kant has another argument schema in mind. This one will employ premise one of the first schema but won’t assume that intelligible experience actually occurs. More on that later.

Kant has an argument for the first premise. And it goes something like this: either the necessary grounds of intelligible experience are (i) only in objects themselves, (ii) only in objects as they appear to us, or (iii) in us. But not (i), since we can’t know objects in themselves (one might worry whether Kant begs the question here against the empirical realist). And not (ii), since the thought of appearances without objects involves contradiction (there wouldn’t be any objects to appear to us). Therefore (iii). Kant thinks it follows (from the definition of `grounds’ and the above trilemma) that premise (1) is true. That is: necessarily, we’ve got intelligible experience only if the grounds for those experiences are in us. Equivalently: if these grounds don’t obtain, we can’t have intelligible experience.

I shall now present (informally) an instance of the above argument schema. Let x takes as its value experience of cause and effect. So we get something like this:

If minds like ours have intelligible experiences of ordered appearances where one seems to us to inevitably produce the other, there are grounds making possible such experience. These grounds couldn’t merely be in the appearances of objects to us; for as Hume taught us, we cannot infer from a mere series of appearances that there are necessary connections between them. Nor could these grounds be in objects themselves, since we’ve got no access to those. So these grounds must be in us.

What are these grounds? Call them `categories.' They’re structures (roughly: the interpretive schema of contemporary evolutionary psychology) that filter and shape the manifold of intuition and experience. It’s only because our minds are structured in this way that intelligible experience of cause and effect happens.

We can repeat this procedure as often as we like, replacing experience of cause and effect with substance, time, space, and the like. I take it that the conjunction of the conclusions of all these mini-arguments will itself be the totality of Transcendental Idealism.

Now tie this strategy into the overall Critical Project. Kant is particularly interested in synthetic a priori knowledge since such knowledge grounds the theoretical sciences (especially physics). So when x takes as its value some kind of synthetic a priori knowledge, the Transcendental Deduction will help us see the grounds of such knowledge. And in giving us this, Kant has given us a sure foundation for the theoretical sciences. The foundation is not only in appearances, and it’s not only in objects themselves. It’s in us. This is the Copernican Revolution Kant is fond of referring to; to show that what matters is not whether our knowledge conforms to objects, but rather whether objects conform to our knowledge (better: to the faculties whereby we know).

I have presented one iteration of the Transcendental Deduction. Here is the second I have alluded to, though I won’t comment much on it:

Schema the Second:

1. Necessarily, if not-p then not-q.
2. Possibly, q.
3. Possibly, p (from 1 and 2)
4. If possibly p then p.
5. Therefore, p (from 3 and 4, modus ponens)

The second schema employs a weaker second premise than the first schema did. To maintain validity, however, Kant must add another premise to the argument--premise four. Kant’s argument for premise four is something like this (I leave it to my reader to judge whether this argument commits any modal fallacies):

If it’s possible that some minds (like ours, at least) exhibit a certain structure making possible intelligible experience, then any minds (like ours) must exhibit this structure. There’s just one way minds could be that could make minds able to have intelligible experiences. And if it must be the case that minds exhibit this structure, then our minds exhibit it actually.

Substance Monism


The history of philosophy of littered with monists. Parmenides was a monist about our most general sortal terms (`thing', `object'); the later Plato was (probably) a monist about Form. Aquinas was (arguably) a monist about human Soul. With these luminaries stands Spinoza, a substance monist.

I shall here articulate Spinoza’s central argument for substance monism as clearly as I can. I shall begin with a few definitions, present the argument as a whole, and then give Spinoza’s sub-arguments for the controversial premises.

Definitions

x causes y iff the concept of x includes the concept of y. For Spinoza, the notions of explanation and causation can be completely understood by means of a primitive inclusion relation holding between concepts.

x is a substance iff there isn’t any y (x≠y) such that the concept of y includes the concept of x. Spinoza thinks that the notion of dependence is completely capture by that of causation. So his notion of substance (against Aristotle’s) follows that offered by Descartes; a substance is something that’s ontologically autonomous or free of dependence on distinct things.

Consequence: x is a substance iff there isn’t any y (x≠y) such that y causes x.


The Master Argument

Substance monism is the thesis that there is one and only one substance. Following is his most widely-discussed argument for this thesis.

1. No two substances can share an attribute.
2. Every substance has an attribute.
3. There is a substance S, infinite in attribute (having all and infinitely many attributes).
4. Thus, if there were a substance T (S≠T), T would have an attribute not had by S (from 1, 2, 3).
5. But 4 is absurd.
6. So there is one and only one substance.


The First Argument for Premise (1)

Spinoza offers two lines of reasoning in support of premise (1). First, he expands his notion of substance to include notions I think best are captured by part/whole talk. His expanded notion of substance is captured, I think, by something like:

x is a substance iff there isn’t any y (x≠y) such that some part of the concept of y includes some part of the concept of x.

He then argues as follows: suppose for reductio that x and y are distinct substances sharing an attribute. From this, it follows that a part of the concept of x is included in some part of the concept of a distinct y. But if this is the case, then x isn’t a substance (for one, it has a part caused by or dependent on some part of y), contrary to assumption. Reductio complete.

The Second Argument for Premise (1)

The second argument for premise (1) looks something like this:

Suppose x and y are distinct substances sharing an attribute. By the Logical Principle of Sufficient Reason, it follows that there’s a reason why x and y are distinct substances. That is to say, there’s an individuator--something in virtue of which x and y are distinct.

There are two possible candidates of individuation. The first is mode. But modes are posterior to substances (they depend on their substances, not the other way around); and surely the thing individuating substances is prior to them. So modes don’t individuate substances. The second candidate is attribute. But by hypothesis, x and y overlap on an attribute. So it cannot be attribute that individuates x and y as substances. Otherwise x and y would be the same in attribute but distinct in substance.

It’s obvious that there’s a problem here (as Leibinz will later point out). The overlap of x and y on one attribute doesn’t entail the overlapping of x and y on all attributes. For all we know, x might have attributes {a, b, c}, while y has attributes {c, d, e}. In this case, attribute difference might still do the work of individuating x and y despite their overlap on one attribute.

The Argument for Premise (3)

Spinoza advances a novel ontological argument in support of premise (3). It goes something like this:

The Principle of Sufficient Reason says that for anything that exists or anything that doesn’t exist, that thing has a cause of existence or a cause of non-existence. So if God didn’t exist, then there’s a cause of his non-existence. This cause must be either in God or in something else. Not the former, since God’s being the cause of his own non-existence would be an imperfection, contrary to our definition of God as the being of infinite attribute. So if God didn’t exist, he has a cause of his non-existence in something else. That is to say, there’s a concept properly including God’s concept which is cause of God’s non-existence. Now by definition, God’s concept includes all other concepts (infinitely many of them, in fact). So there isn’t any concept which properly includes God’s existence. So there can be no reason for God not to exist. So God does exist. That is to say, a substance of infinite attribute exists.

It's worth noting that Spinoza's formulation of the Causal Principle of Sufficient Reason is equivalent to his formulation of the Logical Principle of Sufficient Reason (Leibniz' formulations of the two principles are not, I take it, equivalent). Most importantly, Spinoza's formulation demands a sufficient reason, not just for anything that exists, but also for things that don't!

Consequences

Spinoza is left with a puzzle. For it appears that there are things distinct from God, and yet he’s found a proof that God is the only substance. What are we to make of these things (that is, everything that isn’t identical to God)?

His answer: everything is either a substance or in a substance. By the Master Argument, nothing other than God is a substance. So everything other than God is nonetheless in God. Our concepts are all properly included in the concept of God.

The Function Argument


I shall here explicate Aristotle’s celebrated ergon, or function argument. On my reading, the argument goes something like this:


1. For anything, its function (ergon) is its characteristic (peculiar) activity.
2. For anything, if it’s got a good, it’s good is the excellent (arete) performance of its function.
3. So if humans have a good, the good for humans is the excellent performance of the characteristic (peculiar) human activity (from 1 and 2).
4. Humans have a characteristic (peculiar) human activity: rational activity.
5. So if humans have a good, then it’s the excellent performance of rational activity (from 3 and 4).
6. And humans do have a good.
7. So the good for humans is the excellent performance of rational activity (from 5 and 6).


Aristotle has a sub-argument in support of premise 4: if humans have a characteristic activity, it’s either vegetation (growing, absorbing nutrients), sensation (seeing, hearing, smelling), or rational activity (cognition). But we overlap with both plants and animals on the first, and with animals on the second. The third is the only activity peculiar to us.
There are two points worth noting before whole-heartedly attributing the above argument to Aristotle. First, he considers the possibility that there are many excellences (virtues). His response: if this is the case, then the good of a thing is performance of its function in accordance with the chief of these virtues or excellences. So even if rational activity is just one virtue among many, it still makes its way into the argument. Second, Aristotle adds that we must consider lives as wholes. `One swallow does not a summer make’, so instead of merely speaking of rational activity, we should speak of a complete life of rational activity.

The Formal Distinction


Nearly every medieval philosopher who treated universals employed (at one time or other) the so-called formal distinction. I shall here state this distinction as clearly as I can (following the early Scotus), offer examples of it, and then give one of Ockham’s arguments against the coherence of such a distinction.

It’s easiest to state the formal distinction by noting its relation to two other sorts of distinction: real and conceptual. In short, the real distinction is one found in objects; the conceptual in minds.

Conceptual: x and y are conceptually distinct iff it’s possible that x be signified (brought to mind) and y not (and the other way `round). (the variables x and y here range over particular objects considered under a particular mode of presentation)

Real: (For creatures x and y) x and y are really distinct iff God could create x without creating y. Theological concerns motivate the quantifier restriction in Scotus’ theory of formal distinction (so it applies only to created things). But we can do without this restriction by stating the distinction like this: x and y are really distinct iff it is possible that x exists while y doesn’t.

Examples: Everything is really identical to itself. The Morning Star is really identical to the Evening Star. There’s no world including Venus in which Venus doesn’t exist. But nonetheless, one can bring Venus (under one mode of presentation) to mind without bring Venus (under another mode of presentation) to mind. So the Morning and Evening stars are conceptually distinct.

The formal distinction is supposed to fall somewhere between the real and conceptual distinctions. The real distinction is based entirely in objects, so to speak. It has grounds in the way things are, not merely our thought of them. The conceptual distinction is based entirely in the mind. It has grounds only in our thoughts of things. The formal distinction, on the other hand, has grounds both in objects and in our thoughts of them.

Formal: x any y are formally distinct iff x any y are really identical (not really distinct) but x and y have non-overlapping formal definitions.

This analysis of formal distinction employs the notion of formal definition, so I’ll say something about what that is. Formal (Aristotelian) definitions are supposed to pick out the essence of a thing (these will include the thing’s genus and difference). But sometimes the very same thing can be picked out with more than one such formal definition. Put differently, the very same thing falls under two distinct natural kinds.

The key thing to note here is that formal definitions are more than just modes of presentation. They say something about what kinds of things objects really are.

Scotus’ pet example: the will and the intellect. The two are really identical (God couldn’t create a will without thereby creating an intellect), but can be picked out with non-overlapping formal definitions. distinctio formalis ex parte rei,

Ockham thinks the formal distinction is rubbish. So he makes fun of it. But he also gives arguments to justify his scorn. Here’s one of them:


1. If x and y are formally distinct, then they’re really identical (definition of formal distinction)
2. If x and y are really identical, then for all F, Fx iff Fy (indiscernibility of identicals)
3. x has the property of being formally distinct from y.
4. So y has the property of being formally distinct from y.
5. But this is absurd. So it couldn’t be that x and y are formally distinct.


Ockham’s argument is a good one, I think (as far as these things go), but it rests on an assumption that I don’t think Scotus should grant. It’s clear that the indiscernibility of identicals is true when it comes to numerical identity (that is, identity simplicitur, identity full stop, identity as such). But it’s not clear that the indiscernibility of identicals holds when the identity in question is anything less. In short, Scotus has good grounds to deny premise (2) while still holding onto the indiscernibility of identicals (with respect to numerical identity).

Plato and Aristotle on Change


I shall here explicate how Aristotle and Plato respectively account for the possibility of change or becoming. I shall first articulate the problem they inherited from Parmenides, give Plato’s apparent solution, and then Aristotle’s.

Parmenides argued that becoming was impossible: what comes to be comes to be either from what is or what is not. Not the latter, since nothing comes from nothing. Not the former, since what is cannot come to be (it already is).
From this, it follows that change doesn’t happen. Causation, then, doesn’t happen either, since causation involves change.

Note that the task Parmenides hands down to his successors is not merely to give a story according to which change is possible. Rather, it is to give us a story that gives us understanding of what change is and its inner workings.

I shall now explicate one solution the character of Socrates gives to the problem of change in Phaedo. There are interesting literary questions about whether Socrates in this dialogue speaks for Plato. But I here set them aside and simply speak of Socrates’ views as if they were Plato’s.

Socrates believes that if we can give an account of causation, we can give an account of change. And in giving an account of the former, he’s moving toward an account of the latter (among other things).

The account goes like this. Take the example of the event Socrates’ being seated (this is the case the character of Socrates employs in Phaedo). This is clearly an event that became (it wasn’t always the case that Socrates is seated). But why did it come to be? Plato is unsatisfied with answers to this question which merely give the temporally antecedent causes of Socrates’ being seated (he entered a room, took out a chair, bent his knees, and sat down). Nor is Plato satisfied with answers that merely describe the event in question in further detail. Describing the relations Socrates’ various sinews and bones stand in, the angle of the bend in his body, and the curvature of his spine will never reveal why Socrates is sitting.

What’s needed is something entirely different. Enter the theory of forms. Forms are immutable, eternal, perfect objects of knowledge in virtue of which ordinary things are the way they are (have the features they do). Plato explains Socrates’ being seated as Socrates participating in (being an instance of, resembling) the form being seated. Thus becoming is possible. Or so Plato seems to think.

The mature Plato of the later dialoges (I have Timaeus in mind) has a more refined account of change. But since this account has so many affinities to that offered by Aristotle (Timaeus likely inspired his form/matter distinction), I shall simply present Aristotle's favored account.

Aristotle, like Plato, will employ the notion of form in his account of change. But Aristotle’s account will further employ matter. Distinguish between the ways things are, and the things that are those ways. The former, says Aristotle, are forms. The latter he calls matter.

To elaborate. Things are certain ways; they have natures. These natures are forms, or internal principles of motion and rest. The nature of a thing is most apparent when that thing is fully actualized. When the nature is less apparent, the thing is said to be merely potential. When things don’t perfectly exhibit their nature, they are said to exist less than they might. So things which are merely potential are, considered as such, non-being. When fully actualized, something is said to exist more--to be more like what it is.

Change just is the motion of a thing from potency to act: the actualization of a thing’s nature or form (`the actualization of potential being as such’).

So much for the account (in broad strokes). I shall now show how Aristotle uses it to resolve Parmenides’ problem of change. Parmenides says that what becomes comes to be from being or non-being. Aristotle agrees. Unlike Parmenides, he has the resources to explain how becoming might occur.

Take the example of a man learning how to play a musical instrument. Construed one way, this is becoming coming from non-being. For before becoming musical, the man was non-musical. Becoming from non-being. Construed another way, this is becoming from being, for the man nonetheless had the potential to be a musical man. Becoming from being.

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