The Quantitative Mean: Saved or Abolished?

Giles Pearson thinks that my defense of a 'quantitative' version has perhaps served to abolish it. He writes as follows:

Many thanks for this discussion.

Here’s an attempt at a reply:

First, just so we are not misunderstood, it was the squeak of mice that was not to be feared (see NE 7.5.1149a7-8), not mice in general. (And if the reader does not like this either, they should substitute something that they do not think one should fear at all (Aristotle certainly believes this is not an empty set, see NE 3.7.1115b34-35)).

Second, of course the fearless phobic is a contrived example, but its function is simply to point to a general flaw in the quantitative analysis. Having said that, I don’t see why we can’t generate numerous parallel cases to the fearless phobic that are reasonably common. Take the example I gave in my paper with respect to sphere of temperance. Suppose someone takes pleasure in adultery (something he should not), but does not take pleasure in eating healthy food (something he should). With respect to these objects, this person takes pleasure in the right number of objects (i.e. 1), but the wrong objects. Yet, I imagine there are quite a few people like this, and that such a character does not contravene any of the distribution points you were canvassing.

Finally, let me turn to your response to my argument.

Your idea is that we can rephrase

(1): ‘He fears mice too much’

with

(2): ‘He shows too much fear in fearing mice’

I presume that (2) is to be read as:

(3): ‘In fearing mice, he shows too much fear’,

(rather than e.g. ‘He shows too much fear of mice’, which would imply that there was a right amount to fear mice and so my problem would arise directly.)

Your idea is that (3) does not cause the problem, because it does not imply that there is a right amount to fear mice.

My reply is twofold:

(i) Part of the reason the rephrase does not have the unwanted implication is because it is not actually a rephrase. This is because whereas (1) was referring to how much someone feared something, (3) instead refers to the fact that in fearing a certain thing, an agent manifests (the separate property of experiencing) too much fear. (Cf. ‘the courageous agent fears death the right amount’, which you would rephrase: ‘in fearing death, the courageous agent shows the right amount of fear’. But that was not what the first sentence was saying.)

(ii) More crucially, your (3) seems in effect to do away with a quantitative analysis altogether.

To see this, consider the following. Why does the fact that an agent fears mice mean that he manifests too much fear? Of course, it is because he should not fear mice at all. But then what does ‘he shows too much fear’ mean here? Presumably: ‘he exhibits fear when he shouldn’t exhibit it’, or: ‘he exhibits fear in front of an object he shouldn’t’, or some such?

But, if so, has not the quantitative dimension that you were trying to preserve, upon analysis, disappeared? Exhibiting fear too much, just right, or too little, in effect seems to have reduced to fearing the right or wrong objects.

To see this further, consider:

(4) ‘In fearing death, he exhibits just the right amount of fear’

Why does the agent in (4) exhibit the right amount of fear? Well, in saying this we are not really trying to specify how much he fears death; we are only really referring to the simple fact that he fears this object in the first place. After all, the whole point of your rephrase was to avoid a quantitative dimension in the first clause of the rephrase (‘in fearing death’, ‘in fearing mice’). Hence, (4) simply means: ‘in fearing death, the agent fears what he ought to’. Likewise, I suggest, (3) means: ‘in fearing mice, the agent fears something he should not’.

This rephrase bypasses the problem I set, but only because it in effect does away with the quantitative dimension of the mean altogether.

More on the Mean

To recap from yesterday...

The Doctrine of the Mean
Actions (and emotions) have 'parameters' (what objects, when, how, how much, for the sake of what), and, when an action (or emotion) goes wrong, it does so because it is too much or too little with respect to at least one parameter.

Hursthouse
Sometimes an action (or emotion) goes wrong because of an error in quality, not quantity. Consider the emotion of fear, and the parameter of 'what objects'. A virtuous person fears (let us suppose) only death, trauma, and severe pain. Consider now a 'fearless phobic' who fears only mice, the dark, and open spaces. His error is not one of quantity, because he too fears precisely three sorts of things. His error, then, is one of quality.

Curzer
We should probably say that a 'fearless phobic' is mentally ill, not vicious. But putting this point aside, we can say that such a person does indeed go wrong in quantity: he fears mice (and the others) too much, and he fears death (and the others) too little.

Pearson
It is odd to say that a person fears mice 'too much', when what we mean is that he should not fear them at all. The reason is that a statement of the form, "He F's X too much", carries with it the implicature that some degree of F toward X is appropriate. The oddness of "He fears mice too much" indicates that the difference between fearing mice and not fear them is not a difference in degree.

But now to carry on:

(1) I wonder if Pearson's objection doesn't depend on an artefact of language. 'Too much' means 'more than one should'. Thus, "He fears mice too much" means "He fears mice more than he should (fear mice)." It smuggles in the object, when we wanted to say that the right amount of fear toward the object is none. But that phrasing is inessential. We could easily say, rather: "He shows too much fear in fearing mice", which carries with it no unwanted implicature.

(2) Surely it is right to say that someone "shows too much fear in fearing mice", and also surely the fearless phobic example is contrived and not a serious example in ethics. This needs to be accounted for. I propose the the following.

As regards the parameter of "what objects"-- we do not evaluate actions (or emotions) in isolation, but we interpret each as an expression of a 'distribution'. For instance, as regards fear, we think that a person's fear of something should be proportionate to the actual threat or danger it poses (thus Aristotle, 1115b7-14); furthermore, we presume that the usual principles of rational preference should apply to this (e.g. transitivity--if someone fears a snarling dog more than a mild dog, and a wolf more than a snarling dog, he is rationally bound to fear a wolf more than a mild dog.) So we view his reactions of fear as reasonably and typically distributed in a series: more fear for objectively more threatening objects, less fear for objectively less threatening objects. And that is why the 'fearless phobic' is an unreal example: someone who feared a mouse should reasonably fear even more a heavily armed enemy coming at you in battle.

Now it seems natural to suppose that there will be a relationship between (i) degree of fear as shown towards an object that should be feared, and (ii) extent of distribution of one's fear. E.g. someone who fears a snarling dog too much might fear a mild dog when he shouldn't; someone who fears a wolf too little might fail to fear a snarling dog when he should. Strong emotion makes the distribution broad; weak emotion makes it narrow. We correctly interpret fear toward an inappropriate object, then, in terms of a distribution we take that fear to display. (This is one way in which we view actions as expressions of character.) That is why it is right to say such things as "He shows too much fear in fearing mice", that is, the excess fear he shows toward appropriate objects of fear spills over, even, to things that are not fearful at all.

This notion of a 'extent of distribution' of fear provides a reply, too, to the objection that Ben Miller raised in a comment: If not fearing a mouse is the mean--he asked--and fearing a mouse is excessive, then what counts as the contrary extreme? What counts as deficiency of fear in this case--a negative fear of mice??

In reply to this one might deny that, for Aristotle, all particular actions (and emotions) have erroneous extremes on either side of them (why couldn't Milo's diet ever be to eat all 10 minae?), even if habits leading to extremes (i.e. in some parameter or other) are matched by habits leading to deficiencies.

But perhaps a better reply is available, using the notion of a distribution. Someone who fears too little as regards the 'object' parameter will typically distribute his fear too narrowly. Thus objects that should be on the border are more remote from being feared than they should be. For instance, if it's appropriate to have slight fear for a snarling dog, but not a mild dog, then, as a dog changes from mild to snarling, one should appropriately change from not fearing to fearing it. But if a person generally fears things too little, he won't begin to fear a mild dog that begins to snarl--and from this we might say that, even though he did not fear the mild dog at all, still he feared it less than he should, in the precise sense that he did not place it close enough in the scale to objects that should appropriately be feared.

(Granted, some objects shouldn't be conceived of in relation to the scale at all, e.g. my easy chair, or an earthquake. But that's just to say that these are not 'human' objects of fear, and inappropriate fear as regards such things constitutes mental illness, not moral badness. Again, see 1115b7-9.)

Hursthouse-Curzer-Pearson- ?

With a view to saying something eventually about Aristotle's doctrine of the mean itself... Well, there are still some things to get out of the way. I want to revisit Hursthouse-Curzer-Pearson.

For the moment, understand the doctrine of the mean as: An action (or emotion) can go wrong in one or more of various respects (Curzer: 'parameters'), and, when it thus goes wrong, in that respect it is somehow either more, or less, than what should have been done (or felt) in that respect.

Observations (fine print--skip if you wish!):
1. I don't think we should add that, if the action (or emotion) in some respect is somehow more than what should have been done (or felt) in that respect, then we can imagine some other way of going wrong, complementing it, which would have been somehow less, in that respect, than what should have been done or felt (and vice versa for less). That is, I don't think the doctrine commits Aristotle to holding that right actions (and emotions) fall between complementary and opposed wrong ways of action (or feeling); although I do think the doctrine implies that a virtue, or habit, of right action (or feeling) falls between complementary and opposed habits of wrong action (or feeling).
2. There is no need to presume that 'more' and 'less' must be understood cardinally, or that they are used in other than an analogous sense when used across the various 'parameters'.
3. If an action (or feeling) is 'more' or 'less' in some respect, it can't be made intermediate (neither-more-nor-less) by its being 'less' or 'more' in some other respect. (This I think is the nonsense Aristotle refers to with the language of 'an deficiency of an excess' and 'excess of a deficiency'. This too is how I think he understands why, e.g. theft is always wrong. It is excessive in some respect, and it cannot therefore be 'done right' by someone's hitting the mean in other respects.)

Hursthouse objects that there are some cases in which an action (or feeling) goes wrong, where we should really say that the wrongness is one of kind or quality, not degree or quantity: that is, in some respect the action (or feeling) is different in kind (quality) from what should have been done.

Observation (more fine print!)
4. Hursthouse sometimes seems to argue as if she holds that every way in which an action can go wrong is like this, viz. that it never happens that there is a respect in which an action has gone wrong, and it is wrong because it is somehow 'more' or 'less' than what should have been done. Of course this is too strong, and it gets her into trouble, leading Pearson to try to split the difference between her and Curzer.

Hursthouse contrives an example in which, she thinks, someone gets it right quantitatively, and so his mistake must be qualitative only. Consider the parameter of 'what' (that is, what or what sort of objects one takes for one's action or emotion). Suppose--the details are not essential--that Aristotle holds that a person should fear only death, physical trauma, and severe pain. These are 3 sorts, then, and one could go wrong by fearing either more sorts than these, or less. But now imagine that there was someone who feared exactly three sorts of objects, thus getting the quantity right, but what he feared was: mice, the dark, and spiders. (And he had no fear of the other three sorts of things.) Clearly, his mistake would be one of quality, not quantity.

To this Curzer replies: No, he still makes a mistake in quantity, but it is a different dimension of quantity from the one that your contrived example pays attention to. His mistake --clearly--is that he fears mice (and the dark, and spiders) too much, whereas he fears death and trauma and severe pain) too little. Thus Aristotle is vindicated.

Observation (still more fine print!)
5. This is where Hursthouse in her most recent brings in points about the relativity of number to description (Frege: an assertion about number assigns a number to a concept.) But Pearson shows, I think, that this ends up being smoke--Curzer's reply can be reformulated even allowing for this.

Pearson then replies to Curzer as follows. I'll quote the passage for you. I quote it posing this challenge: Do you regard this as a powerful and satisfactory reply? I have my doubts, which I'll share with you in a later post.

The following objection should be raised. We are imagining the scenario in which any amount of fear of such objects qualifies as ‘too much’. But if I tell you that Luke fears the dark ‘too much’, though that would be logically consistent with me thinking that the appropriate amount to fear the dark is not at all, I would most naturally be understood, I take it, to be suggesting that some amount of fear is appropriate, just not the amount Luke feels prone to experience. The quantitative comparison, ‘too much’, seems to imply that some amount is correct and so in cases in which the correct amount is zero it seems that something has gone wrong. Consider the following: Bob embezzled ‘too much’ money; a pop star abused ‘too many’ children; the Nazis killed ‘too many’ Jews. In each case, I take it, though it would be logically consistent to think that the person asserting the claim maintains that the right amount in each case is zero, this is not how they would be naturally understood or construed. Similarly with the other side of the equation: characterising the fearless phobic’s lack of fear of death, etc., quantitatively as him fearing these things ‘too little’. Again, one could reply that if you claim that Eric does not fear death enough (on the battlefield) that tends to imply that he fears it to some degree, but the case in question is supposed to be one in which the agent does not fear it at all. Imagine someone who does absolutely no work - not someone who does a little work, just not very much - someone who really does no work whatsoever, but instead just lazes around all day long, from morning until evening, watching TV and drinking beer. If you claim this person works ‘too little’, though that may be logically consistent with you thinking he does no work at all, you would, I take it, most naturally be thought to be implying that though this agent does some work, he does not do enough. As with the claim that the fearless phobic fears e.g. mice ‘too much’, we might think that Curzer’s analysis suggests the wrong answer. Does the fearless phobic fear the squeak of mice ‘too much’? One might well think that it sounds odd to say so, if one believes we should not fear this to any extent at all.
Curzer’s strategy seems committed to the view that, if confronted by Hursthouse’s counter examples, Aristotle would appeal to misleading implicatures like the above.

A Complaint, A Question, and a Quibble

Just small points this morning-- a complaint, a question, and a quibble about Kraut's treatment of the famous NE passage on method. His essay is in general very good, but his discussion of this passage has been bothering me in small ways.

Here is Kraut's translation, followed by the Greek

One should, as one does in other cases, set out what seems to be the case [ta phainomena ] and, by first going through the puzzles [diaporēsantes], in this way prove, first and foremost, all of the reputable opinions [endoxa] about these ways of being affected [that is, about akrasia and other conditions of the soul], but if not all, then most, and the most authoritative; for if the difficulties are solved and the reputable opinions [endoxa] remain, adequate proof has been given (VII.1.1145b2-7).

dei= d', w(/sper e)pi\ tw=n a)/llwn, tiqe/ntaj ta\ faino/mena kai\ prw=ton diaporh/santaj ou(/tw deiknu/nai ma/lista me\n pa/nta ta\ e)/ndoca peri\ tau=ta ta\ pa/qh, ei) de\ mh/, ta\ plei=sta kai\ kuriw/tata: e)a\n ga\r lu/htai/ te ta\ dusxerh= kai\ katalei/phtai ta\ e)/ndoca, dedeigme/non a)\n ei)/h i(kanw=j.

A complaint.
Should we understand these remarks as universal or restricted? Does Aristotle take himself here to be giving a universal--indeed the only--method for philosophical inquiry, or a method that is to be used only in some circumstances?

The question is obviously not answered by the phrase 'as in other cases', because we do not know what the relevant class of comparison is (all cases whatsoever, cases like this one in some respect, etc.).

One would think that a commentator should be clear on this basic point, but Kraut seems not to be of one mind. On one page he says that Aristotle "takes himself to have a general method of establishing what is true--general in that it applies to many subjects, not just to ethics" (86); but on the very next page he says that "ethics must be judged by the same endoxic method used to prove truth in every other field" (87).

Of course 'many' does not exclude 'every' (and 'available for use in every field' would not imply that it is the only method available in any field); but when one glosses 'general' by 'many', the implicature is of 'not every'.

Most commentators presume that the method is meant to be the sole method, and a universal method, but there are reasons for denying that this is so; moreover, it would be strange for Aristotle to use so rarely a method that he regards as universal. (One of the truly valuable points about Bostock's book is his observation, in an appendix, that only a small fraction of the Ethics may rightly be described as conforming to that method.)

A question.
Do phainomena and endoxa mean the same thing in this passage? Of this Kraut says simply, "We can safely assume that in our NE VII.1 passage Aristotle uses his terms phainomena and endoxa to refer to the same things". But this seems arbitrary: Kraut gives no reasons.

It is perhaps natural to assume this. But to my mind there is a good reason against it, which is this: Aristotle clearly regards his setting out of the relevant phainomena as completed by the end of VII.1 ("These, then, are the things that are said",ta\ me\n ou)=n lego/mena tau=t' e)sti/n.). But later he then goes on to take into account, and attempt to reconcile, other views--such as Socrates' view that there is no such thing as akrasia, because knowledge cannot get dragged about by anything else. In fact Aristotle's procedure in VII suggests two tiers of relevant data: phainomena which are accepted outright (perhaps with qualifications, as in the couple of instances where there are conflicting reports), and endoxa which are more theoretical and which are 'handled' relative to the phainomena.

Of course you see how one would be more inclined to this reading insofar as one did not take the passage as describing a completely general method--because then the content that we give to the passage would hinge more directly on how Aristotle actually proceeds in the chapters that follow.

A quibble.
This concerns Kraut's explanation of 'most authoritative' (kuriw/tata). He says:

...what makes certain reputable opinions most authoritative (kuriōtata)? When we look at what Aristotle's writings do, when they encounter conflicting reputable opinions that cannot be reconciled by the recognition of ambiguities, what we find is that he evaluates the strength of the arguments that can be found for and against conflicting options. For example: some say that pleasure is the good, but the arguments they use merely show that it is a good, not the good (NE X.2.1172b23-8). Aristotle does not say "this reputable opinion should be accepted and that one rejected because the first seems more plausible than the second". He does not appeal to some notion of intuitive plausibility. Rather, he argues for one position and against the other. So, for an endoxon to be "most authoritative" is simply for it to be the one that is best supported by argument. Its authority comes from the fact that it wins us over.

But I wonder if Kraut's interpretation of the word isn't being controlled by the overtones of the English, 'authoritative'--for we, as philosophers, like to contrast 'reasoned argument' with 'authority', and say that the only authority in philosophy is reasoned argument.

Yet this is not Aristotle's claim, I think. The Greek clearly does not have this sense, and kuriw/tata as 'more powerful' (viz. in argument) seems forced. Wouldn't it, rather, be natural to take kuriw/tata to mean something like (as we would say) 'more fundamental' ('more fully entrenched', 'more decisive for thought'). In which case Aristotle's claim would not be that we put arguments for the views against each other, head-to-head, as in a fist-fight, to see which one wins (And on what grounds? Are these arguments resting on the same premises or different ones? If different, how do we evaluate the different weight of these?), but rather that we should aim to hold onto the more fundamental view, and qualify or reject the more remote view--and there are many, many instances of his proceeding in this way in the corpus.

Raphael Woolf, first BACAP lecture of 2006-7

We so much regretted his leaving that we invited him back as soon as possible:

Boston University and the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy present

Raphael Woolf
Philosophy, King's College, London

"Misology and Truth"

Thursday, September 14, 7:30 pm
Room 525, School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston University

Commentary by
Professor James Wood
Philosophy, Boston University

Also a seminar:
"Truth as a Value in Plato"
Thursday, September 14, 4 pm
Room 541, School of Theology
745 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston University

Both the seminar and lecture are open to the public.

Problems with IE Browser

Some readers have reported (and I have the problem myself) that the Greek in the side bar of this blog does not show up on Internet Explorer; also, the spacing is poor. But in Mozilla Firefox (which I use), all is fine.

I've looked carefully at the blog's template to see what might explain this but don't know why this should be the case.

I'll continue investigating, but if you know how I might be able to sort out this problem, please let me know (e-mail would be best).

Logoi Passing in the Night

In an earlier post I expressed puzzlement that Hursthouse’s “The Central Doctrine of the Mean”, her contribution to the recent Blackwell anthology, was written as if Howard Curzer had never responded to her original paper-- even though Hursthouse several times refers to Curzer, and Curzer’s paper (for those who have studied it) might be thought to make a serious reply.

This seems a shame. Hursthouse writes a provocative paper; Curzer pens a vigorous reply. Hursthouse’s paper, then, misses an opportunity to resolve or advance this quaestio disputata.(And how could I not lament a lost opportunity to set out dissoi logoi?)

And yet--as a reader of this blog has now pointed out to me--the discussion that I had been looking for has been carried out, by Giles Pearson, in the latest issue of Ancient Philosophy ("Does the Fearless Phobic Really Fear the Squeak of Mice Too Much", 26: 81-91)!

Pearson agrees with me that the dispute is a close one, and, after moderating the discussion, he arrives at an appropriately moderate conclusion:

As I see it, Curzer’s purely quantitative reading of Aristotle comes at too great a cost; at the same time, Hursthouse’s account actually seems to understate the quantitative dimension to virtue. As one might have anticipated, the truth is somewhere between these two extremes.

And given that the debate is so close, Pearson is puzzled, as others have been, that Hursthouse’s latest essay fails really to engage Curzer’s objections:

It is noteworthy that though she makes frequent reference to Curzer’s paper she does not directly address his arguments….

Indeed, he takes the strong view that the paper does nothing to reply to Curzer, that the force of Curzer’s arguments is not deflected by anything Hursthouse says in her latest paper: “Hursthouse’s new account … fails to undermine Curzer’s position”, he remarks. Pearson's crucial observation on that head is perhaps this:

We can thus grant that description is important in general, but insist that since it does not seem to affect the general structure of the original arguments, we should deny its importance in the dispute at hand. If so, Hursthouse’s latest arguments do not undermine Curzer’s approach…

Yet for all that Pearson is unconvinced by Curzer, and the 'quantitative' Doctrine of the Mean, and he goes on to formulate his own objections.

Perhaps I’ll examine these in a later post (you may be wondering about those 'fearless phobics')--and say more, too, about how I think the Doctrine of the Mean in ethics should be understood.

Two Doctrines of the Mean

Here is the issue. Rosalind Hursthouse, in her contribution to the recent Blackwell anthology on NE, dismisses the Doctrine of the Mean on the grounds that it is a 'whacky' bit of pseudoscience, that has 'no truth in it whatsoever'. She claims that Aristotle unthinkingly applies the doctrine to ethics. Her essay consists largely of an exposition of two other views which she finds in NE and which she thinks are true: (i) that there are various 'parameters' with respect to which we can go wrong in action; (ii) that our emotions make us 'naturally fitted to receive the virtues'.

Hursthouse is very enthusiastic about these other ideas: the first, she says, is 'a great insight into what is required for acting (and feeling)', and the second is 'a wonderful way to think about virtue'. For my part, I'm not clear that (i) is so great an insight, and I'm not even sure what Hursthouse means by (ii).

But I want to look more at Hursthouse's rejection of the Doctrine of the Mean.

As I said yesterday, it's implausible to say, as she does, that Aristotle unthinkingly injects the doctrine into ethics. In NE he is very clear about the impropriety of applying generalizations from natural science to human character, except in some altered or analogous sense. Tellingly, in VIII.8 he deals with the natural scientific doctrine of the mean in just this way and declares that the discussion of it 'belongs to a distinct discipline'! So Aristotle is on record as explicitly rejecting precisely the mistake that Hursthouse attributes to him!

But today I wish to press another difficulty, namely, that the natural scientific doctrine of the mean (as we may call it) is evidently different from the Doctrine of the Mean as stated in the ethics. They are two different notions of an intermediate or mean (meson).

The natural scientific doctrine of the mean, I take it, is something like the following. In a teleological system, it often happens that extremes, or opposites, need to be somehow 'neutralized', in order to make the required contribution to the good of the whole. This neutralization can take place either through a balancing (in which we imagine that the extremes continue to have their force, but in equiposition), or a mixture (in which we imagine that each extreme acts on the other to produce some resultant product that falls in between).

One might regard this doctrine as Aristotle's view about what is right in Heraclitus' view of co-dependent opposites.

Now two points about this.

First, it is not a whacky doctrine at all. Indeed, one might think that something like this must be true, simply given the nature of a teleological system. One might of course doubt that such systems exist (in which case it is 'teleology', and undoubtedly also 'hylomorphism', which one must regard as pseudoscience). But what such a system would be, is a system in which parts that otherwise would not operate together harmoniously, to some single effect, are so adapted that they now do so. This very description requires that its parts somehow be balanced or mutually opposed, so that the effects that each would otherwise produce are moderated.

It would be easy to think of examples of this. Consider for instance how electrical impulses are propagated along the membrane of a nerve cell. The movement of the charge is achieved not by the conduction of electrons within the cell (as in a copper wire), but rather by a change and transmission in potential effected by sodium and potassium ions. As this potential is propagated, the charge at each location is 'neutralized' and effected at the immediately continguous location. Thus the 'extremes' of positive and negative charges are used against each other to achieve safely an effect (the propagation of an electric signal) that might otherwise be hazardous to living tissue. Furthermore, through this neutralization the tissue immediately regenerates its capacity to propagate an impulse. (See for instance the Introduction here.)

The point is that it is natural to speak of living systems, or perhaps even natural systems generally, as 'harnassing' and 'moderating' forces that, operating on their own outside of such systems, would work to an extreme that would be incompatible with the good functioning of such systems. This I take it is what the 'natural scientific doctrine of the mean' is meant to capture.

Put me on record as holding that there is something right about this; it is not 'whacky'.

But, second, this is not the Doctrine of the Mean as used in Aristotle's ethics. I do not see that Aristotle conceives of, or defines, a virtue as consisting of a balance or mixture of opposing forces. What's the evidence that he does? Hursthouse supplies none.

Do We 'Mean' What We Say?

The difficulty in Hursthouse's way of dismissing the Doctrine of the Mean is the following.

She holds that the doctrine was accepted by Aristotle as a truism and a common way of analyzing the natural world, and that he, as it were, unreflectively imports it into his Ethics. Someone who has great respect for Aristotle's judgment in ethical matters, then, need not worry too long about whether he in fact meant something important by the Doctrine. It's as misguided as most of Aristotelian science. Rather, we should investigate what true things Aristotle was talking about, using this language, which he inherits from his environment, of a 'mean'. Aristotle didn't understand what he was doing here; we however can disentangle his true remarks from the packaging in which he presents them to us.

But isn't the Ethics marked by a great sensitivity as to which principles apply properly to the explanation of human character and action, and which principles, in contrast, perhaps because they are taken directly from natural science, 'belong to another inquiry'? A very good example of this (there are others) is VIII.1, where Aristotle insists than any general principle of 'like being attracted to like' (or unlike to unlike), taken from natural science, should not be employed in ethics, except perhaps in some analogous sense.

It's in this very context that, in fact, Aristotle brings in a physical notion of the mean (1159b19-20), and he's quite clear that this has a significance different from what would apply in ethics, and that it is a principle foreign to the explanation at hand:

But presumably opposite is drawn to an opposite not in itself, but incidentally, and its impulse is for a mean (meson). Why? This is good, for instance, that the dry become not moist, but that it arrive at a mean condition; likewise for hot and the other opposites similarly. Yet let's put these considerations aside. Of course (kai gar) they belong to another subject (allotriwtera).

One might mention also the great fanfare with which Aristotle introduces the Doctrine of the Mean; his use of it to organize the virtues and vices (an innovation); and his claim that it is verified by an examination of cases (1107a30-31). It's a well-entrenched thesis that cannot, I think, plausibly be dismissed in the manner that Hursthouse attempts, at least.

Greeks 1, Germans 0

You probably saw this already.

It was running like wild-fire through the net last week. Several philosophers sent me the link in the same morning.

I played it in my Ancient Philosophy class the next day, saying that I hoped it would sway students who were still undecided as to whether to enroll in Ancient Greek Philosophy or German Idealism.

Of course I mean the famous Monty Python skit about philosophers playing soccer. It's very funny and worth looking at again if you haven't seen it in a while.

(Thanks to James Warren for a correction of this link.)

Simply Whacky

Rosalind Hursthouse has a curious contribution in the Blackwell anthology entitled, "The Central Doctrine of the Mean".

(By the way, if you've figured out that I'm reading through that anthology to 'check out the competition'--congratulations on your savvy!)

To catch you up if you don't know... Hursthouse a few years back authored a justly admired essay, "A False Doctrine of the Mean" (1980-1 PAS), arguing in effect that Aristotle's doctrine of the mean is misguided and incoherent, because rarely can quantitative dimensions of 'more and less' be applied in a meaningful way in giving an account of the moral character of an action. (e.g. Does a married man who commits adultery go astray by having sex with more women than he should? Is that what's wrong with his action?) She argued similarly that it was implausible to take moral failings to line up neatly into excesses and deficiencies.

Howard Curzer wrote a very nice reply (Ancient Phil 1996), methodically distinguishing Hursthouse's various criticisms and responding to each. I think that a fair reader of Curzer's piece would have to conclude that he at least makes the dispute appear to be a close one--that it's not so easy to dismiss Aristotle's doctrine as 'false'.

One might have anticipated that Hursthouse, writing now, would include a convincing reply to Curzer in her essay. And yet she side-steps this task, by an interesting move. She declares her lack of interest in the project of figuring out how the Doctrine of the Mean is "true, or at least plausible." In her view, the Doctrine is so "whacky", so clearly and obviously false, that there is no point in engaging in debate with interpreters such as Curzer. So she devotes her article to identifying two other views of Aristotle, which Hurtshouse thinks are correct. (She describes what she is doing as uncovering the two true views contained in "the central doctrine of the mean", but in reality what she does is change the subject--she discusses two views merely found in the neighborhood of Aristotle's appeal to that Doctrine.)

This raises all kinds of interesting questions. For instance, in an anthology reader on Aristotle's ethics, intended in part for beginning students, is it wise to include an essay on the Doctrine of the Mean written by someone who has absolutely no sympathy with it? ("[T]here is no truth in it whatsoever", Hursthouse writes, p. 100.)

I'll give the crucial passage in her essay, where she side-steps Curzer. The passage admits of a fairly obvious (and to my mind devastating) objection. (Yes, this passage too.) Can you see what it is? I'll tell you in a subsequent post.

Claiming that (under a certain interpretation) the doctrine is true, or at least plausible, is, for Urmson and Curzer, obviously important. Most of us who work on Aristotle's ethics do so in the belief that he is one of the greatest moral philosophers of all time and that (almost) everything he says about ethics is either true or worth taking very seriously indeed. So we are reluctant to attribute implausible views to him, that that was why I was so puzzled, in the earlier article, by the prevalence in the ethical works of the implausible (in my view) talk about excess and deficiency, and Aristotle's commitment to the mysterious mathematical symmetry of there being precisely two, opposed, vices corresponding to each virtue (Hursthouse 1980-81: 59-60). But that was before I became aware of the use of the doctrine of the mean as a general explanatory principle in Aristotle's predecessors and in his other works. This casts it in an entirely different light.

If we regard it as peculiar to the ethical works, we are bound to take it seriously, to work on the assumption that there must be something right about it, just as we assume that there must be something right about the idea that we have a final end, or that megalopsuchia is a virtue. (Of course, we may try our hardest and still fail to find anything, but we remain open to the possibility that someone else will do better.) But if it is not peculiar to the ethical works, the principle of charity does not apply to it in the same way. We do not work on the assumption that there must always be something right in what Aristotle says in his 'scientific' works, and we assess the doctrine of the mean as it appears there on its own merits.

When we do, it stands revealed as, to be blunt, simply whacky, emphatically not a principle 'worthy of his genius' (in contrast, say, to his hylomorphism) but a bit of completely misguided science-cum-metaphysics that appears to have been generally accepted in his day. Thereby we lose any reason to try to find something right about it in the ethical works, for its presence there, notwithstanding its implausibility, is no longer puzzling.

I wonder: Is there much in Aristotle, or in any major philosopher, that is truly "completely misguided"-- that has nothing right about it? I'm suspicious of any interpreter or historian of philosophy who makes such a statement (even for Aristotelian natural science). Don't the endoxa need to be saved?

I also wonder whether someone who comes to think that a thesis is "completely misguided" does not eo ipso disqualify himself from commenting on it, especially for the purposes of a 'Guide'. (You may be a perfectly wonderful philosopher, and your arriving at your new view may have constituted a bit of philosophical progress for you, but to interpret N. as regards X. is something that, alas, you are no longer in a position to do. The interpretation of N. on X. must now be left to those benighted philosophers who still think there is something plausible and interesting about it.)

But my main objection hinges on Hursthouse's newly discovered grounds for giving up on the project of finding anything plausible in the Doctrine of the Mean, viz. that the Doctrine is not peculiar to the ethical works.

I'll explain this objection in my next post.

Lower Standards of Proof

When Kraut argues that, for Aristotle, the standards of proof are not lower than in other disciplines, he uses a passage from J.S. Mill's Utilitarianism as an example of the contrary view. And yet in that passage Mill is putting forward a view shared by Aristotle! This seems an unaccountable gaff in what is otherwise an accurate and reliable essay.

Kraut says the following:

It might be thought that in ethics proof (as we use that notion) is simply not possible, and that moral philosophy is never entitled to use that word about what can be achieved by even the best methods...

Someone who thinks that ethics is circumscribed in this way will find some support for his view in a well-known passage near the end of the first chapter of John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. Speaking of his "Utilitarian or Happiness theory," he says that he will give "such proof as it is susceptible of," but then adds immediately: "It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof."

According to Kraut, Mill is expressing here the view that the "level of justification is lower [about practical matters] than is available in other matters."

But this is a simple misinterpretation. In the passage (and see the beginning of chapter 4, too, for further confirmation) Mill is not drawing a contrast between 'practical matters' and 'other matters'. His contrast is rather between 'ultimate principles' and 'derived principles', and he is making the thoroughly Aristotelian point (see Metaphysics IV.4) that ultimate principles do not admit of direct proof.

So Kraut quotes Mill in illustration of a view supposedly opposed to Aristotle, referring to a passage in which Mill--certainly, and rightly--would have thought himself to be echoing a familiar Aristotelian doctrine!

Facts of Omission

How do we decide whether an interpretation:

• nicely makes explicit some important theme that is implicit in the text, or
• imposes a meaning on the text that the text really does not bear?

In particular, is there some important view about moral beauty that is implicit in Aristotle's Ethics? I have been sympathetic to this claim myself, since one would at first suppose that Aristotle resembles Plato in this respect and works in the same framework. And yet recently I have been troubled by whether there is any evidence in the text that ultimately requires that sort of interpretation.

I posed the challenge: Are there any passages in NE where kalon is used, where that term cannot be understood as standing proxy for 'good' (or as 'admirable' or perhaps 'fitting', in an ordinary sense)--as spoudaios stands proxy of agathos?

And I've been unconvinced by Gabriel Lear's essay, which aims to work out a theory of moral beauty in the NE, because she frequently blends together interpretation and evidence.

An example is a paragraph Lear quotes from Aristotle on p. 132. Here is the quotation she gives, as it is found in her essay:

The happy person always, or more than anyone else, does and reflects on [theoresei] actions in accordance with virtue and bears his luck in the finest way possible [kallista] and in a way that is harmonious in absolutely every respect . . . Many great pieces of fortune will make his life more blessed (for these naturally help adorn it, and the use of them is fine [kale] and decent). But if they happen the opposite way, they crush and maim blessedness, since they bring pains and impede many activities. But nevertheless even in these circumstances the fine [to kalon] shines through [dialampei] . . . We think the truly good and sensible person bears all chances gracefully [euschemonos] and always makes the finest things possible [ta kallista] from his circumstances, just as . . . a cobbler makes the finest [kalliston] shoe from the skins he is given. (I.10.110b19-1101a5).

On Lear's gloss, this passage highlights moral beauty: "The virtuous person is musical; he is able to act with good order and grace no matter the circumstances. ... Aristotle suggests that what mitigates the misfortune of his position is not simply that his actions are as well ordered as they could possibly be given the situation, but that the beauty of these actions 'shines through'. To whom must this beauty be visible if it is to be of relevance in assessing the extent of his unhappiness? ... because he is a reliable craftsman of the fitting (IV.2.1122a34-5), something of beauty will always shine through and, given the sort of person he is, he will gaze on it."

Yet the paragraph seems to bear that meaning, only because words have been omitted, as becomes clear if we supply them (highlighted):

The happy person always, or more than anyone else, does and reflects on [theoresei] actions in accordance with virtue and bears his luck in the finest way possible [kallista] and in a way that is harmonious in absolutely every respect as someone who is 'truly good [alethos agathos] and four-square beyond reproach'. Many great pieces of fortune will make his life more blessed (for these naturally help adorn it, and the use of them is fine [kale] and decent). But if they happen the opposite way, they crush and maim blessedness, since they bring pains and impede many activities. But nevertheless even in these circumstances the fine [to kalon] shines through [dialampei] when anyone calmly endures frequent great misfortunes, not because he is hardened to them, but because he is a man of nobility and great-heartedness [megalopsychos]. We think the truly good and sensible person bears all chances gracefully [euschemonos] and always makes the finest things possible [ta kallista] from his circumstances, just as both a good general uses the army at his disposal for the very best effect in war [polemikotata] and a cobbler makes the finest [kalliston] shoe from the skins he is given.

Each of the three passages omitted, it seems, takes away what might have seemed to be special in Aristotle's use of kalon or similar words. The first traces the happy person's ability to endure bad fortune simply to his goodness of character. The second explains what Aristotle means by 'shines through': namely, that bad fortune provides an opportunity for a person to show especially that side of his character by which he disdains goods of fortune. (And the relevant virtue is megalopsychia, not megaloprepeia, as Lear's citing of IV.2 would suggest.)

The third omitted text, with its appeal to a general's use of his troops, indicates that beauty is quite inessential to the point that Aristotle wishes to make (which involves a double illustration, kai ... kai...), and, indeed, it suggests that kalliston, even in reference to the cobbler, means something like 'most serviceable' or 'very well-made'.

So still I'm still left wondering: Is moral beauty an idea that is important and presupposed in NE, or dispensable and imposed? Does the editing of the passage above reveal a pattern that might have been missed, or create the impression of a pattern that is not there?

Different, not Higher or Lower

When Aristotle says in NE I.4 that an educated person would no more demand demonstrations from a rhetorician than persuasive arguments from a mathematician, which of the following is he claiming:

1. Demonstration is a higher standard of argumentation and proof than persuasive argument, and it is always to be preferred when possible, but something less than this is to be accepted when (on account of the subject matter) demonstration is not possible.

2. Demonstration and persuasive argument are equally high standards of argumentation and proof. There is no sense in which one may be ranked higher than the other, because they differ in kind rather than in degree. Demonstration is appropriate to some disciplines, and persuasive argument to others.

Call the first methodological 'Elitism'; the second 'Egalitarianism'.

One might have thought that Aristotle was an Elitist, on the grounds that he says that mathematical inquiry is more 'precise' (akribes) than rhetorical argument, and (it seems) he is presuming that, when there is a choice, greater accuracy is preferable. (Shouldn't we always choose to be more precise, when we can be so?)

Yet Richard Kraut, in an excellent essay which is his contribution to the Blackwell anthology he has edited on the Nicomachean Ethics ("Aristotle's Method"), apparently opts for Egalitarianism. Kraut begins (p. 87) by acknowledging that Elitism at first looks like the correct interpretation of the passage:

It might nonetheless seem that Aristotle is, after all, downgrading the level of justification achievable by ethical inquiry because, soon after he notes that such matters seem to rest on convention alone, he insists that "we must be satisfied, in speaking about such matters and proceeding from them, to show [endeiknusthai] what is true roughly and in outline, and when discussing matters that hold for the most part, and proceeding from them, to arrive at conclusions of the same sort (NE I.3.1094b19-22).

But then Kraut insists that this would be a mistake, that Aristotle is defending Egalitarianism:

That might make it sound as though Aristotle ... is asking his audience to place lower intellectual demands on the arguments of ethical inquiry than those of other studies. But we should be careful here. Aristotle is not judging the credentials of ethics and other fields by applying to them all a single kind of measure or standard. On the contrary, he is asking us to have different expectations of different fields: not higher standards for some fields and lower standards for others, but different standards. An orator who addressed his audience by putting everything into the form of deductive arguments would fail miserably--he would be a worse orator, not a better one--but this does not mean that the intellectual standards by which oratory is to be assessed result from a lowering of the standards used elsewhere. Similarly, although ethics must be judged by the same endoxic method used to prove truths in every other field, we should recognize that it is a field in which some of what is shown to be true holds only for the most part.

You might be concerned, with me, that Kraut is failing to distinguish some very different considerations here: an argument's power to convince, its intellectual difficulty, its rigor.

Yet, even so, do you see the obvious objection to Kraut's interpretation--implicit in what Kraut says here--which, to my mind, quite undermines it?

Silence Means Dissent?

I'll post two more comments on G. Lear's construction of a theory of moral beauty for Aristotle's Ethics.

The first is this: Her essay (in the recent Blackwell anthology edited by Kraut) leaves me wondering whether what is most interesting about Aristotle's mention of the kalon is not how he inherits a conception of moral beauty from Plato, or shares the same outlook, but rather how he in comparison downplays the significance of such a view.

Thus Lear throughout her essay is constantly imputing views about moral beauty to Aristotle--derived, I think, from her study of Plato--but then needing to retract or seriously qualify her assertions, in the absence of any real textual support for them. The following series of remarks (my emphases) is perfectly representative.

It is quite likely that Aristotle thinks it is part even of the fully mature virtuous character to enjoy the fine in what Plato would have called a thumoeidic or spirited way. That is to say, it seems to me likely that Aristotle follows Plato in attributing to human beings natural competitive desires to be and to be recognized as "the best"... And it seems to me likely that he follows Plato in thinking that these spirited desires can be gratified by the beauty of virtuous actions. For, like Plato, Aristotle describes moral education as being effected by the child's spirited concern with praise and blame and as directed toward teaching children to take pleasure in the beautiful.

But note that Lear gives no evidence for this last claim, and in fact a few sentences later she admits:

But although I believe Aristotle agrees with Plato about the relationship between spirit and the beauty of virtue, he does not in his own moral theory give it anything like the prominence it receives in the Republic. For the overwhelming majority of his discussion of virtue, Aristotle is content to distinguish reason from non-rational desires without mking further divisions within the latter.

She goes on to say (my emphases again):

Thus it does not seem plausible that his repeated descriptions of the virtuous person as acting for the sake of the fine are intended primarily as comments about how the virtuous person gratifies his sense of pride. Nor does it seem plausible that the value of the fineness of virtue is found primarily in what it gives to the spirit.

This may look like an outright contradiction: the interpretation she is proposing is likely, but it is not plausible. But actually it is not, because what Lear is claiming is that, although it is likely that Aristotle held these views, it is implausible that what he says about the kalon is 'intended primarily' to be expressing these views.

Go figure. My question is: Given how little Aristotle says about these matters, should we hold (a) it is likely he thought something similar to Plato, but did not express it; or (b) given that one might have thought that he was likely to hold a view similar to Plato's, his failure to emphasize it shows, rather, that he is very much rejecting that view?

The Fleetingness of Beauty

To play devil's advocate a bit longer ...

What is at issue is whether one cannot substitute 'good' without loss for kalon, (or perhaps, in some circumstances, such bland terms as 'admirable' or 'fitting'), so that there are no grounds for holding that beauty, or moral beauty, is distinctively important in Aristotle's Ethics.

Gabriel Lear thinks that moral beauty is thus important: "according to Aristotle, not only are virtuous actions kalon-- beautiful, fine, noble--but the virtue agent chooses them for this reason". She offers a theory of moral beauty for the Ethics, claiming that:

1. Aristotle holds that a good action is beautiful in view of its order, symmetry, and boundedness, which make such an action beautiful,
2. Aristotle thinks of beautiful actions as essentially having a 'visibility' and 'showiness', and
3. Aristotle regards "the visibility of the fine [as] also important as a condition of its causing (its proper) pleasure."

But I am wondering how this theory is supported by any texts in the Ethics. Lear concedes that there is no direct support for 1.: "Defining the fine as effective teleological order does not yet distinguish it from the good, however" (122). That is: one may substitute without loss 'good' for 'kalon' in all those contexts in which one takes Aristotle to be appealing to "effective teleological order" and dispense with talk of beauty.

She therefore has to put great weight on 2: "If we examine his other remarks about to kalon, we find that visibility or 'showiness' is essential to his conception as well." But she cites the Poetics in defense of this. When she turns to the Ethics she says "Aristotle does not emphasize showiness or quasi-aesthetic appeal in his discussion of virtue as an intermediate." Indeed. She then misdescribes a remark in Aristotle's discussion of magnanimity: "the great-souled person, who is the best and most worthy of public honor (IV.3.1123b28), acts on a grand scale specifically because beauty depends on size (IV.3.1123b5-7)". But that's not what the passage says: Aristotle does not say that the achievement of beauty is a motive of the magnanimous person. (On Lear's misconstruction of the passage, Aristotle would be committed to the view that the kalon could be achieved only in great actions.) Finally she quotes 1177b16-17 and says that "actions of the politikos and the soldier stand out in their magnitude and also in their beauty". But Aristotle writes kallei kai megethei, and why should we think that 'beauty' (kallos) here signifies the same as kalon, as that is applied elsewhere, to virtuous actions that don't 'stand out'?

Similarly Lear gives no compelling texts in support of 3. She defends the claim by appeal to a passage from the Rhetoric: "Whatever is praiseworthy, being chosen for its own sake, is kalon, or whatever, being good, is pleasant because it is good" (1266a33-34). But that passage seems, rather, to undermine her view, since it defines kalon in terms of goodness and pleasure. Accept that it gives the definition of kalon in the Ethics, and one has no need of a theory of beauty: kalon may be eliminated through definition.

Is There a Theory of the KALON in Aristotle's Ethics?

As is well known, Aristotle uses a variety of words in the Nicomachean Ethics to refer to a good person: good (agathos); serious of purpose (spoudaios); decent (epieikes); and righteous (dikaios). But, for all that, no one would seriously suggest that there is a theory, say, of moral seriousness in the Ethics. To be sure, for Aristotle any good person has 'serious' and 'decent' aspects. Yet it would be absurd to puff this up into some special thesis in Aristotelian ethics. And if someone did wish to propose that sort of puffed up thesis, we might challenge him to find a passage in the Ethics where spoudaios, or one of the others, couldn't be replaced by agathos without loss (except perhaps in 'connotation' or 'tone').

When reading Gabriel R. Lear's contribution ("Aristotle on Moral Virtue and the Fine") to the recent Blackwell anthology on Aristotle's Ethics, I found myself wondering--in spite of my own past thoughts to the contrary--whether agathon and kalon don't work in much the same way as regards actions, and that it would be a mistake, then, to look for a 'theory of the fine' in Aristotle's Ethics. So in my mind I posed a similar challenge, and it was unclear to me that it could be satisfied: Is there any passage in the Ethics, where Aristotle describes an action as kalon, where one couldn't substitute agathon without loss (except in 'tone')?

In her essay Lear simply supposes that kalon has a special sense of 'beautiful' ("according to Aristotle, not only are virtuous actions kalon--beautiful, fine, noble--but the virtuous agent chooses them for this reason"), and then she explains what she thinks this can mean--by relying heavily on Plato, and on works by Aristotle other than the Ethics. But the case isn't so easy to make out, by working up from texts in the Ethics alone.

Indeed, she concedes that it is 'tempting' to interpret Aristotle's common claim that we do virtuous actions for the sake of the kalon, as meaning simply that we do them because of their goodness:

...there is truth in this assumption. What makes actions fine is also (in part) what makes them worth choosing for their own sakes. That is to say, goodness and fineness in action are in large part constituted by the same property (to anticipate: being well ordered by the human good). For this reason, we can learn a great deal about what Aristotle considers intrinsically valuable in the various virtues by examining his remarks on the specific ways in which they are fine.

"Nevertheless," she says, "according to Aristotle the concept of the kalon is not the same as the concept of the good, the agathon". And yet what text in the Ethics could support this claim? Aristotle never compares these 'concepts' there, and, indeed, as Lear admits on the next page, "Aristotle never explains in the NE what to kalon is"!

Furthermore, even if kalon were a different 'concept', it wouldn't follow that anything important hinged on its use (cp. agathos, spoudaios).

Tomorrow perhaps I'll look at the few NE passages that Lear considers and see if any can meet the challenge I mention above.

Books Not Fully Cooked

A paragraph you might have missed, from the end of a review of a recent book on Aristotelian teleology, raises indirectly a question that friends and I have wondered about -- whether standards for book production are dropping, and, if so, why.

Although the editorial production of a book is never entirely the author's responsibility, and in some cases mistakes are made that are not the author's fault at all, a significant number of editorial and typographical errata mar the overall presentation of the work and at times prove quite distracting. Throughout the book, sometimes on the same page, and in some instances even in the same line (75), the Greek for one of Aristotle's central teleological phrases—hou heneka—is incorrectly aspirated, wavering back and forth between hou heneka, ou heneka and even ou eneka. There are numerous errors of punctuation, incorrect italicization and inconsistent capitalization of titles, and accentuation of words in Greek. The capitalization and printing of column letters in the citation of Bekker pages randomly alternates between upper case and lower case; sometimes they are written in superscript, sometimes not. On the very first page of the book, the title of Aristotle Metaphysics is inconsistently italicized in the same line (p. 1 n.1). I caught over 50 typographical errors in the first 150 pages of the book, after which I stopped keeping track. Such errata seem unusual for a prestigious university press, and one hopes that this author's first book--worthy of inclusion in any research university's library--can be corrected in subsequent printings.

I must admit this baffles me. We’re all familiar with the startling experience of discovering a typo on a page that had been checked carefully in proofs by both author and proofreader. But how could multiple mistakes of this sort go unnoticed and uncorrected?

And the blame is to be shared by press as well as author: inconsistencies in citations and format should have been caught by the copy editor, even if an author might be excused for overlooking them.

Is this book, published by Oxford University Press, an exception, or is it part of a larger trend toward poor workmanship in books? And, if the latter, what could be the cause? One might have thought that modern methods of book production would have made it easier to notice and remove mistakes.

Safe Haven

This time of year my mind turns to arguments as to why a beginning student might wish to study ancient philosophy, or an advanced student might wish to specialize in it.

Comparative arguments are perhaps more persuasive than absolute. For instance, I was persuaded to concentrate in ancient philosophy, in part because of a comparison I had drawn with the degree of scholarship I had encountered in Hume studies. Do you regard it as valuable to become a good scholar? But the scholarly problems in ancient philosophy are more difficult, greater minds had been at work on them, a longer tradition needs to be mastered, and greater skills arerequired, than, it would seem, in any other discipline of philosophy, especially Hume studies.

Do you wish not simply to be clever but also to become learned? But how many philosophers could count as learned? And isn't the case that those to whom one might naturally apply that word (Burnyeat, Nehamas, MacIntyre--one might think of) have expertise in ancient, or medieval, philosophy?

Again, what sort of mind do you wish to develop and have? What do you want your intellectual personality and character to be like? Here there can be strange correlations between the sort of material one studies, that is, the kinds of argument one typically thinks about, and the intellectual characteristics one acquires for oneself--strange, because sometimes philosophers who might seem especially 'analytical' or 'hardheaded' seem to gather about them disciples who write in an opposite and completely unappealing way. Apparently, someone's mind may become more analytical, and clearer, by studying Plato than by studying, say, Quine.

This last point was decisive for me, too, when I began to focus on ancient philosophy--I noticed clarity in the followers of Aristotle, but obscurity in commentators on supposedly rigorous analytic philosophers--as I was reminded when I read a recent review of a book on Quine in NDPR, containing such paragraphs as the following:

There is a continuing strain of contention, running through the relevant literature, one not effectively avoided in the present book, between interpretation of Quine's thesis and evaluation of it. If we assume that the indeterminacy of translation (and meaning) simply is a matter of underdetermination by evidence (of our theory of what is meant), then this threatens to beg the question against Quine: nothing distinguishes the status of translation proposals from empirical theories or hypotheses; nothing affects translation beyond the "usual underde­ter­mination of theory by evidence;" there is nothing "additional." Still, stated as a conclusion of an argu­ment, this is one way to reject Quine's distinctive semantic theses. On the other hand, if it is emphasized that to understand Quine's thesis we must acknowledge that there is something "additional," an impor­tant difference between indeter­mi­nacy of meaning and underdetermination of theory by evidence, then this threatens to beg the question in Quine's favor, though it is also a way to state the conclusion of Quine's argu­ments.

... and ...

This reader senses that the quasi-positivistic owl of Quine's physical­istic-behavioristic reduction of meaning to stimulus meaning always flies at dusk -- after the semantic work of science has established new concepts and meanings along with new theories. Similarly, Quine's totalizing and holistic physicalistic system is found to sleep eternally, remaining, so far as we know, ever incomplete. Again, we may mystify instead of clarify the concept of meaning by exclusively seeking an integrative, physicalistic paraphrase, consis­tent with contemporary physics, of statements we seek to understand.

The first paragraph is attempting to put forward what, I think, is a good objection. But look at how it is written! What person trained in accurate thought (say, an average engineer or accountant) would find this sort of writing admirable?

The second paragraph shows that the reviewer, ultimately not sympathetic to Quine, has apparently been so drawn in by the mysticism of 'indeterminacy of translation', as to write with fantastical images and in near complete obscurity.

Would a mind trained on Leibniz or Scotus, or someone who was used to puzzling through the Categories or Philebus, naturally think in that way?

Me and My Shadow

Or perhaps 'other self'? Either way, a case of willing confusion of identity.

From a pilgrimage to the Vienna Kuntshistorisches Museum.

Dissoi Blogoi to Resume Monday, August 28

First a move to Cambridge, Mass., and since then traveling, to Washington, D.C., and then to Vienna, Austria ... despite my good intentions, I have lacked stability in my schedule sufficient to blog.

Since it would seem incompatible with smoking fine cigars in Viennese coffeehouses, to castigate myself for not keeping to a resolution, I prefer to guarantee my fidelity, by hereby resolving not to blog until after I return, on Monday, August 28.

Enjoy the rest of the summer! And let's meet again nearer to the end of the month. I'll be looking forward to another academic year of argument, contention, criticism and comment.

On Toposes and Aporia

Perhaps you missed this comment in a recent review of N. Rescher, Philosophical Dialectics:

But the book does have a relevant problem, one that was easily avoidable. If ever a book seems not to have been copyedited and proof-read, it is this one. Typographical errors abound, including many glaring mistakes. I do not recall more of them, ever, in a serious philosophy book: approximately every second page contains one. Almost inexplicably, too, some entire passages appear twice within the book. A short paragraph from p. 31 recurs on p. 35; p. 78 repeats material from pp. 38-9; pp. 79-80 reprise, with a few trivial changes, a passage from p. 39 (oddly, the later appearance corrects a substantive typographical mistake from the earlier one); much of p. 80 all-but-repeats some of pp. 37-8; and a paragraph on p. 40 occurs again, with minimal alteration, on p. 81. That is not all: p. 103 quotes a lengthy passage from Peirce (referencing it cursorily in n. 10, on p. 113) which also appears in n.6 (appearing on p. 113); pp. 104-5 feature a passage used at pp. 97-8; this is followed immediately, on p. 105, by a few sentences from p. 99.

A pity, I think. Apparently, if Rescher had divided the book somewhere between pages 41 and 78, he could have had two books for the effort of one.

I wonder if you've heard mathematicians speak of 'toposes' (plural, for them, of topos), which is a branch of category theory. In an reverse twist, the NDPR reviewer seems to think that aporia is plural, presumably of aporion:

And how are those principles implemented within philosophy? Aporetically! Even individual philosophers, it seems, incur this predicament: "generally the answers that people incline to give to some questions are incompatible with those they incline to give to others" (p. 17). We strike our toes on "cognitive dissonance" (ibid.), on "puzzlement and perplexity" (ibid.). Aporia arise. ("An apory is a group of contentions that are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent" (ibid.)) Socrates would be proud of his legacy.

Examples abound, and Rescher mentions several -- starting with ones about virtue, knowledge, meaning, explanation, and the problem of evil. How should a philosopher react to these aporia? Precisely as philosophers do react:

one can . . . become a skeptic, and walk away from the entire issue, or else one can settle down to the work of problem solving, trying to salvage what one can by way of cognitive damage control. . . . (p. 19)

Mathematicians can be excused for this sort of thing, but not, I think, philosophers--and not, certainly, editors.

Moved Out

Here's one time when I'd rather predict than promise or intend: it's likely I'll post tomorrow, as finally I've finished the move out of our house.

This was a difficult move, which, as you know, took a week longer than planned (by the revised plan!). My procedure in the past, when moving, had always been simply to box, move, and then unbox--indiscriminately. This time, as I said, a decision had to be made about everything, and there were six options: leave behind, take along, give away, sell, store, trash.

But the good thing about a protracted move is that we are hardly 'in boxes' now, as we've been able to set up rooms at the pace at which we've moved out.

Here's a picture of our new digs, which the youngest children call 'the Hotel'.

Joseph immediately became good buddies with six year-old N., who with his sister are the only other children living in the apartment complex.

I'll tell you a story which, to my mind, helps to confirm that our decision to move was a wise one. We have been wanting to start our youngest children on musical instruments. The Longy School of Music is immediately next door, and my wife went there today to inquire about lessons. She brought home a brochure with a picture on the cover of the face of a young boy playing violin in the Suzuki program at Longy.

Later in the day, when N. was visiting our apartment, he asked whether we recognized the boy on the picture of the brochure. Indeed, it was N. himself. We told him that our boys owned a violin (a 1/4 size instrument that we had bought last year, in anticipation of lessons). So N. excitedly ran home and brought back his violin. He then proceeded to show my boys how to hold the bow, position the instrument, and so on.

So, on our first day entirely moved out of our house, here I was, witnessing a six-year old neighbor showing my boys how to play the violin, as naturally as if he were teaching them how to play tag or toss a ball. I won't romanticize Cambridge, and I do recognize that this incident was extraordinary, by any reckoning--but, needless to say, it was not something that would have happened in the farm town of Lancaster.

Ensnarled in the Population Imagination

The best thing, in my view, about a recent Call for Papers from the "Metaphysical Society of America" was the footnote at the end:

N.B. The 2007 program takes place on a Sunday and Monday, not Saturday and Sunday.

I liked that. After all, why should we presume that it is acceptable to hold academic conferences on the Jewish Sabbath, which effectively excludes many of our colleagues? But why hold them on a weekend at all? Why shouldn't they be scheduled, standardly, during the week, and considered as part of our professional work--with our making provisions, of course, to make up for missed class time?

But the rest of the Call is the sort of thing gives metaphysics a bad name. Here's the first paragraph.

Metaphysics, First Philosophy, was described by Aristotle as the quest for ultimates, archai, as he put it. Its subject: Being qua being. Its core question: What is it for a thing to be? Metaphysics considers not just living things, like biology, or thinking, or the weather, but whatever exists. It holds itself open to consider all claims about reality at large. It is perhaps its generality that has given metaphysics a bad name in some quarters. The interest in ultimates ensnarled it in population imagination with the arcana of the occult. For many philosophers, metaphysics has seemed to be hopelessly entangled with irresoluble quandaries. For how could one have the effrontery to try to characterize reality at large? Some have taken refuge from such big questions by turning to an analysis of language or some other meta-critique, parasitic on other modes of discourse. Others have substituted historical disquisitions on texts and the circumstances of their composition. Or they have sublimated, if not creatively, in poetic or artistic expression, then cloaking their metaphysical interests in the opacity of oblique discourse or the armor of technical jargon. And yet the big questions do not disappear. They remain robust as long as human curiosity flourishes. And efforts to address them persist, varying in quality with the insights or insightfulness of those who make the attempt.

The paragraph raises interesting metaphysical questions itself, such as what sort of thing is such that it can be ensnarled in the imagination ('population imagination') together with 'arcana of the occult'. Or how is it that there can be a 'meta-critique' which is not parasitic on language but 'discourse'. Or what it means for persons to 'sublimate'. Or whether a question may remain robust when human curiosity no longer flourishes. (I did, however, appreciate the subtle distinction between 'insights' and 'insightfulness'. That was helpful.)

Of course we certainly should avoid 'cloaking metaphysical interests in the opacity of oblique discouse'. That would be terrible. We should never do such a thing.

The second paragraph attempts to clarify:

Our question, then, is the ancient one: What is it for a thing to be? Do minds exist? If so, what is their relation to bodies? What is it to be a person, or a living being? What connections are there between being and knowing? fact and value? reality and truth? Do ideas exist, and if so how? Does God exist? What about probabilities and possibilities? What is the ontic status of causes? All these questions are opened up by the inquiry into being. The topic is chosen for its openness to a wide variety of perspectives. Papers are invited that seek to grapple with such questions, drawing on the work of past and present philosophers but not avoiding active engagement with the core questions in their own right.

Yes, clearly, 'the ancient question', What is it for a thing to be?, is equivalent to Do minds exist?, the fact-value distinction, and the existence of God.

And what about probabilities and possibilities? Yes, what about them?

Floruit, Bis

For friends of Dissoi Blogoi, who are tuning in to the blog, even after I've said that I wouldn't post until July 16... to reward you for your loyalty, I post a picture of a strange double flower, a kind of Siamese Twin flower, which my sister-in-law, Mary, discovered in the field, not far from where Muddy Man once lived. Note that it has a flat stem, double in width as compared with a normal stem. Each flower has its own sepals.

Floruit, Bis

For friends of Dissoi Blogoi, who are tuning in to the blog, even after I've said that I wouldn't post until July 16... to reward you for your loyalty, I post a picture of a strange double flower, a kind of Siamese Twin flower, which my sister-in-law, Mary, discovered in the field, not far from where Muddy Man once lived. Note that it has a flat stem, double in width as compared with a normal stem. Each flower has its own sepals.

Until July 16, Non Cogito

I've been wanting to post but must finally face up to reality.

We're in the midst of a move, from our sprawling homestead in Lancaster, to a tiny 1100 sq ft apartment in Cambridge, MA. We attained the keys to the apartment today and have agreed with our renters to be out of our current residence within a week.

(The reason for this move, is to be closer to my wife's Ph.D. program in economics: the plan is that, through her finishing her dissertation, the privative evil of an ABD willl be removed from the world.)

The moving in part is easy. We need merely select out a tiny subset of our furnishings, and take personal effects roughly equal to what one would bring on a 2-week vacation. This effects a marvelous simplification.

However, everything that remains must be dealt with: if not placed the trashbin, then boxed and put into storage. Thus an enormous quantity of stuff must be handled.

Philosopher that I am, the overwhelming magnitude of this task has just struck me--which has led me also to realize that, in truth, I will not be able to post, or even so much as glance at a scholarly book, until July 16 or so.

And now, dear reader, I have given you fair warning.

On Vacation

You might have guessed that I was away on vacation last week. It didn't seem wise to announce it to the world beforehand. But there can be no harm after the fact.

Of course, no one wants to see pictures of someone else's vacation. Yet what about a picture which shows the very essence of vacation?
(That's Gregory in the "Ball Crawl" in Storyland, New Hampshire.)

Or a picture which has a splendor all its own, such as the following, taken from a ledge on Mt. Willard, overlooking Crawford Notch in the White Mountains of New Hampshire?(In the foreground that's Gregory, once again; Joseph, known already to readers of this blog; and Nicholas.)

Or a picture which proves that, once in a while, moose actually do cross the road, or at least come near the road, at one of those innummerable 'Moose Crossings' indicated on New England roadways?

An Unwilling Voluntarist

We saw that Anscombe makes the interesting claim that obligation (being bound or required, what one ought to do or needs to do, duty) is inherently diverse, and that some special justification is needed for either treating all 'ought' in action as the same, or holding that there is some uniform 'moral ought' that spans diverse domains of human action. She holds, correctly, that this view was presupposed by some major thinkers in the classical tradition, such as Aristotle (and presumably including also Aquinas); she furthermore maintains that 'modern moral philosophy' unreflectively, and--she thinks--incoherently, presumes, as against the classical tradition, that there is a 'moral ought', while not accepting any framework which could give this presupposition any sense. Among other things, she diagnoses Hume's is/ought quandry as a consequence of the modern viewpoint.

These are interesting claims. They would certainly merit examination in a book on the Nicomachean Ethics, as they would inevitably help to clarify what is distinctive and difficult to grasp in Aristotle's approach.

But Irwin's essay in the recent Kraut collection misfires, because he dramatically misunderstands Anscombe. He takes Anscombe to be claiming that Christian natural law theory is voluntarist; that a commitment to voluntarism sets Aquinas apart from Aristotle; and that the flaw in 'modern moral philosophy' is that it presumes a conception of 'ought' which could have content only by appeal to the will of a divine legislator, the existence of which is denied. The first two claims are false, and Anscombe never held them, and the third claim misconstrues Anscombe's diagnosis. So Irwin's essay ends up being an unneeded lecture, directed against Anscombe, on the theme that Aristotle and Aquinas were not voluntarists.

I give some quotations to show this. Irwin grants the initial plausibility of what he takes to be Anscombe's view as follows:

Evidently, Aquinas believes that there is a divine legislator, and that natural law embodies eternal law, which is not independent of the mind of God. Hence he seems to agree with the Christian view (as Anscombe describes it) against the Aristotelian view, by treating morality as the product of legislation by a divine legislator (p. 326).

Note that Irwin is supposing that Anscombe's view, or her view of Christian natural law theory, is that "morality is a product of legislation by a divine legislator."

Irwin then says, correctly, that this is not Aquinas' view, and, taking himself to be arguing against Anscombe, insists repeatedly:

[Aquinas] believes that natural law contains rules, commands, and action-guiding requirements, but he does not argue that law essentially consists in commands that are expressions of the will of a legislator....

Natural law includes commands that do not consist in expressions of the will of any external legislator...

Natural law imposes obligation that does not depend on the will of a legislator...

Irwin follows with a brief summary of non-voluntarist moralists in the early modern and modern periods, saying that these views are at least as plausible as "Anscombe's voluntarism" (p. 330). And he concludes:

If we believed Anscombe, we would suppose that Aquinas differs sharply from Aristotle about the moral ought, but we ought not to believe her. If we believed Pufendorf's voluntarism (implicit in Anscombe), naturalists such as Aristotle and Aquinas cannot recognize a moral ought because they cannot recognize external reasons, but we ought not to believe them. (p. 335)

All along he seems not to grasp Anscombe's basic challenge--over the uniformity of the notion of 'ought' or requirement.