The Philosophy of Popular Science

Next to the long and noble tradition under the heading ‘the philosophy of science’ - which includes brilliant thinkers from Aristotle to Karl Popper - , there is another question which receives somewhat less attention, and which one might title ‘the philosophy of popular science.’

Under this second heading one might ask about non-scientists and how they understand and interpret science. This would include, but not be limited to, the impact of science on, and the images of science projected by, popular culture, popular literature, and popular news media.

Some scholars note that scientific thought is often popularly perceived as monolithic. Phrases such as “scientists have found …” or “science reveals …” generate the notion, among reading non-scientists, that there is a body of scientists, and a conceptual construct called ‘science,’ which speak uniformly.

The popular notion of science rarely includes serious yet conflicting hypotheses, or attention to truly open questions which are the object of investigation. Liam Scheff writes:

When an official from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) throws out an edict (“Get vaccinated for bird flu!”), or the World Health Organization (WHO) makes one of its famously failed predictions (“One in 5 American citizens will have AIDS by 1990!”), it’s front-page news around the globe. We’re not allowed to think; we’re just supposed to swallow. And when scientific claims do turn out to be false, we don’t get angry. “Better safe than sorry,” we tell ourselves. “Anyway, we all know that a bird-flu pandemic awaits us.”

If science were monolithic, then when a prediction fails, or when one hypothesis is substituted for another, then the public would be left to assume that science has changed its mind, and to assume further that science is to be trusted in these matters. Given the popular understanding of science as univocal, the public does so assume.

On the one hand, there is science as understood both by scientists themselves and by philosophers of science. On the other hand, there is this popular understanding of science. Between them, there is a great gap. Thus when the results of scientific inquiry, or the words of a scientist, are reported to the public, they are misunderstood.

The notion, for example, of competing theories which equally map known data points is not part of the common understanding of science. While the public wishes to know which theory is true, the philosopher sees two theories as two different ways of characterizing a set a data.

The popular press seeks a simple declaration which it can report, and runs roughshod over the process by which a theory is constructed. Liam Scheff, noting how the natural sciences are reduced to the assertion of simple propositions in the popular press, writes:

But what if there was good evidence that these things weren’t true? Would Fox and CNN report it? What if serious, established researchers had strongly disparate views on an issue? Should they be allowed to debate each other on the nightly news?

The popular media do not see the natural sciences as addressing a long list of open questions. They wish to present sciences as a set of “proven” or “accepted” propositions - and even at that, they sidestep any discussion about the meaning of ‘proven’ or ‘accepted.’

Matters which are largely accepted - e.g., that a water molecule contains two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom - are matters which are, in and of themselves, of little interest to science. More interesting are the questions which are truly open - e.g., how a certain molecule, injected into a cell, seems to know where inside the cell it belongs.

Because the popular press wants to reports results and not investigations - assertions and not questions - it furthers the illusion that the natural sciences are monolithic. It is telling that the few questions found about scientific topics in popular reports are either rhetorical questions, or questions about mundane possible future practical applications, and not questions about the matters themselves. Liam Scheff continues:

The major media work hard to create the illusion that science is uniform: a single-minded group of hard-working researchers, joined hand in hand, in a race against the clock, seeking the chemical cures that will save humanity from obesity, cancer, AIDS, death, and all of the other ravages of nature that must be conquered.

Scientists themselves, along with philosophers of science, are more prone to pose questions than those who report about science. Often, the questions which engage researchers are questions which won’t have a clear and simple answer any time soon, if ever. But such questions aren’t satisfying to readers, or writers, of popular news outlets.

Simple and sensational propositions feed the common taste. Understood within most methodologies of science, a prediction is an opportunity to test a hypothesis or a theory. But in the popular media, these predictions are understood not as tests, but as simple assertions. One scholar, Charles St. Onge, writes:

Consider predictions about future events. No one has been to the future, so it cannot be observed scientifically. But based on past events that have been observed, we can apply scientific models to predict what might happen in the future. Such predictions are always tentative. The further into the future we try to predict, the less accurate our predictions can become. This is especially true as we account for a lot of variables, as weather and climate forecasters must do.

Eventually, the effects of the popular reports about science begin to work in the other direction, and affect science itself. Governments, universities, and the foundations which grant funding to scientists begin to have a stake, not in the quality of the questions posed, and not in the quality of the analysis about the data, but rather in the bold assertions which they are able to make in the press.

Having once entered into the business of producing results in the form of simple propositions for the media, instead of reflecting on theory construction, scientists and those who fund them find that they have territory to protect. This shifts the scientists from exploring to defending. Or, as Charles St. Onge phrases it,

Because of this reluctance to give up a model or theory, it is possible for almost everyone in the scientific community to be wrong about a certain idea. The late Michael Crichton, famous doctor and science fiction writer, pointed this out in a lecture at the California Institute of Technology. He reminded his audience that science, unlike politics, is not about consensus; science is about getting things right.

It is bad enough when the popular media distort science for the public; it is even worse when these distortions begin to steer the investigations of science itself.

Parsing Rorty

In a memorable passage, Richard Rorty makes a number of comments about labor unions, religion, and morality. This texts presents good examples for analysis and interpretation.

One task facing the reader is to sort out what is philosophically interesting and what is historically interesting. Simply to know that a certain historical individual asserted a certain proposition, or believed it, may be historically interesting, but is not philosophically interesting.

Knowing, however, that a certain individual asserted that proposition allows us to ask whether that proposition is consistent with the other propositions which he asserted, and may allow us to decide whether some of the competing interpretations of that individual’s philosophical system may be evaluated based on the knowledge that he asserted this proposition.

To know that Marx saw labor unions as an embryonic version of a revolutionary communist party is an empirical fact which may interest historians but which does not, by itself, interest philosophers.

On the other hand, knowing that Marx did hold such a view allows us to ask two questions: Is that view consistent with other central propositions in Marx’s philosophical system? Does Marx’s assertion of this proposition rule in, or rule out, some of the many competing interpretations of Marx’s system?

Using powerful but ambiguous vocabulary, Rorty goes on to assert that organized labor is an instance of specific “Christian virtues” - and not only an instance, but the “most inspiring” instance.

The use of the word ‘Christian’ raises an entire flock of new questions - the attempt to establish a clear definition of this word can fill hundreds of pages with debate - but we need not arrive at the complete and comprehensive definition of ‘Christian’ for our purposes, because Rorty is concerned, at least at this point in his text, only with “Christian virtues,” and not the entirety of what might fall under the heading of ‘Christian.’

This allows us to table the larger task of defining ‘Christian’ and busy ourselves instead with the somewhat smaller, but still complex, task of defining ‘Christian virtues.’ Without arriving at a final list of what those might be, we may proceed with the vague assumption that this list would include, e.g., altruism, honesty, pacifism, etc.

Rorty specifically asserts that “self-sacrifice” and “fraternal agape” are among the Christian virtues. Regarding the former, ‘self-sacrifice’ is perhaps an under-determining phrase, because a more complete expression would include some idea about the recipient of the sacrifice - for what does one sacrifice?

Even an avowed and explicit anti-Christian would endorse the notion of self-sacrifice, perhaps self-sacrifice in the service of opposing Christianity. So when Rorty lists “self-sacrifice” among the Christian virtues, he should refine the statement, either by stipulating self-sacrifice becomes virtuous self-sacrifice when made for certain purposes (e.g., self-sacrifice for achieving peace is virtuous, while self-sacrifice made for the purpose of bringing about war is not), or by stipulating that “self-sacrifice” is virtuous if and only if when it is part of a multi-virtue bundle including certain other enumerated virtues.

The phrase ‘fraternal agape’ poses additional interpretive challenges. What does Rorty mean by this phrase? As is already well-known, agape is one of several Greek words which are rendered into English as ‘love’ and stands in distinction to several other Greek words which are likewise translated.

The philology and hermeneutics of agape stretches over centuries and are complex. At the core of it lies a concept of self-sacrifice. But given the Rorty has already used the term ‘self-sacrifice’ in a separate phrase, we will extend charity by assuming that he has a separate and distinct referent for this word.

In general, exegesis of agape denotes not only self-sacrifice, but self-sacrifice for the sake of another: giving, at one’s own cost, for the benefit of person without expectation of any return or repayment.

What, then, does Rorty intend by adding the adjective ‘fraternal’ to agape? How does “fraternal agape” differ from non-fraternal agape?

One popular dictionary defines ‘fraternal’ as

of or denoting an organization or order for people, esp. men, that have common interests or beliefs.

The usual understanding of agape would not limit altruistic self-sacrifice as being for the sake of those who share “common interests or beliefs.” Rather, agape is a sense of sacrificing selflessly, and without any expectation of recompense. To sacrifice only for those with “common interests or beliefs” would imply and entail some sense of recompense, inasmuch as sacrificing for the sake of one’s fellow believers would be achieving a goal in the form of progress for the community of believers.

An argument - a persuasive and plausible argument - can be made for the proposition that there is an internal tension in the phrase “fraternal agape.” Under the usual understanding, agape is given without expectation of reciprocation, and therefore is not to be extended only to co-believers, but rather to all humans. Rorty writes:

The trade union movement, which Marx and Engels thought of as only a transition to the establishment of revolutionary political parties, has turned out to be the most inspiring embodiment of the Christian virtues of self-sacrifice and of fraternal agape in recorded history.

Four words attract attention in Rorty’s continuance of the passage: ‘most’ and ‘purest’ and ‘unselfish’ and ‘heroism.’ How do these terms apply to collective bargaining?

Can we argue that, “morally speaking,” organized labor is the “most encouraging” phenomenon of recent years? More than, e.g., German Lutherans and German Roman Catholics who crossed denominational lines to form a united Christian underground resistance against Hitler’s Nazi government? More than white Americans who willingly offered their lives to ensure that African-Americans would receive their constitutional voting rights?

Probably some efforts by labor leaders were unselfish, but were they the ‘most’ and ‘purest’ unselfish actions? While there were unselfish aspects to those actions, there were also elements of self-interest in better wages, better working conditions, and union dues paid to those who led such efforts.

While heroic, were the efforts of labor leaders the ‘most’ and ‘purest’ examples of heroism in recent decades? If herosim is defined, roughly, as “bravery,” we might ask about soldiers in battle, mothers in labor, and other examples, - and ask whether collective bargaining is the “most” and “purest” example of bravery. Rorty continues:

The rise of the trade unions, morally speaking, is the most encouraging development of modern times. It witnessed the purest and most unselfish heroism.

Rorty then proceeds to compare organized labor to (1) churches, (2) corporations, (3) governments, and (4) universities. He argues that labor unions have greater “moral stature” than these.

He makes this claim based on the assertion that union leaders had “an enormous amount to lose.” One tacit premise in his argument is that people in churches, corporations, governments, and universities had little or less to lose. The truth-value of his assertion will be determined in part by empirical facts: an accounting of who lost what.

One side of Rorty’s claim is, then, philosophically uninteresting, but historically interesting. We may make a tally of lives lost, and of other things lost, by various organizations, and decide who lost the most.

But another side of Rorty’s argument is philosophically interesting. Two claims in particular, both of which are unstated but implied, attract philosophical attention. First, he seems to be asserting the proposition that those who lose more gain “moral stature.” Second, he is operating with some definition of ‘church’ which needs to be made explicit.

Defining ‘church’ is perhap as thorny a task, or nearly so, as defining ‘Christian’ - but, under most plausible definitions, it would include millions of martyrs - from those killed under Roman rule prior to 313 A.D. to those currently being killed in places like North Korea.

There are, to be sure, competing definitions of ‘church’ - but even the most cynical of these would have to include the martyrs along with those who were part of a worldly power structure which called itself ‘church’ but lacked virtues which would normally qualify it to bear that name, or included the vices which would normally disqualify it.

Does Rorty really mean to say that the labor unions have a higher moral standing than the hundreds of thousands who went willingly to their own deaths simply so that others could experience altruism, pacifism, and communal harmony? He writes:

Though many trade unions have become corrupt, and many others have ossified, the moral stature of the unions towers above that of the churches and the corporations, the governments and the universities. The unions were founded by men and women who had an enormous amount to lose ‑ they risked losing the chance of work altogether, the chance to bring food home to their families. They took that risk for the sake of a better human future. We are all deeply in their debt. The organizations they founded are sanctified by their sacrifices.

If Rorty truly believes that an organization is “sanctified by” sacrifices, then, by his own calculus, churches would be more holy than collective bargaining. If he truly means to assert that the moral standing of a group is based on its willingness to seek “a better human future,” then the church, which introduced the notion that every human life is valuable and should be respected, should have such a moral stature beyond organized labor.

Societal Factors in the Manifestations of Autism

This text is not about the definition of autism, nor about its etiology, nor about the methodology of its diagnosis. This writing explicitly claims to make no claims about those questions.

Rather, this text will present material which others may use in investigating those questions. This investigation is not about autism spectrum disorder(s) per se, but rather about the manifestations of ASD.

Individuals with ASD often find it difficult to understand or interpret society’s unwritten rules. They are generally more skillful at navigating explicit and codified systems of behavior.

Societies vary in their levels of complexity, and in the extent to which their expectations about patterns of behavior are transparent. At one idealized extreme would be rigid and formalized societies whose rules could be specifically stated in words; at the other extreme are anarchic societies whose few and intricate rules might be subject to numerous exceptions.

Consider this example: imagine a society in which there is a general social rule, “men ought to wear their pants (jeans, trousers) so that the waistline of the pants are above their hips.” This is a clearly intelligible rule, which can be either explicitly taught or learned by induction.

Now, imagine another society in which this general rule applies to most people, but not to all people. Some people, aficionados of the hiphop or rap culture, are exempt from the rule, and wear their pants so that the waistline is below their hips; they are permitted to dress this way, without social ostracism or bearing other negative consequences.

For some individuals with ASD, the second society will present an opaque system. If they are told to pull up their pants, and if at the same time they are observing others wearing pants below the hips, they will, in the absence of explicit formulations given to them by others, find it difficult to induce or intuit the systematic rules in play.

Those who have spent substantial time inside an American public high school during the last decade of the twentieth century, or during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, will understand that this example is not hypothetical.

Another example: imagine a society in which the general rule is that men may wear hats outdoors, but should remove hats when coming indoors.

Then imagine a second society, in which some men are exempt from this rule, and wear baseball caps indoors.

Again, autists may find it difficult to discern the rules governing the second example. Others may need to offer them explanation and clarification.

These observations constitute primary data for investigations about ASD. From them, one may work out implications.

Tentative hypotheses present themselves. Perhaps some societies are easier than others for individuals with ASD to navigate. Perhaps increased numbers of diagnosed cases of autism are a result of societal changes which cause borderline or latent cases to become detectable. Perhaps borderline or latent cases go undetected in some societies but become noticeable in others.

Perhaps, in some societies, books like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and Emily Post’s Etiquette can serve individuals with ASD to make explicit those social expectations which are implicit.

In other societies, perhaps, the byzantine complexity of social rules and their numerous exceptions make it difficult or impossible to codify such rules in a usable form. Perhaps some societies have rules which can be, but simply never have been, codified.

Perhaps increased numbers of cases of autism in the United States in recent decades is due in part to the changing structures of society, if those structures are changing in directions which make society more difficult for individuals with ASD to navigate.

Perhaps, as North American society has changed in a direction away from rules which either are explicitly codified or at least capable of being explicitly codified, and has changed toward rules which are either not capable of being codified or at least have not been codified, it has become more difficult for individuals with ASD to navigate, and thereby caused latent or borderline cases to become detectable.

In this writing, no definite conclusions are drawn; much remains to be investigated. Presented are empirical data about the ways in which autists encounter the complexities of society.

Properties: Paper Burns, but Is It Flammable?

The advances made in mathematics at end of the nineteenth century overlapped with advances in formal logic, leading to the birth of symbolic logic in the form of Frege’s Begriffschrift. In the twentieth century, logic was employed by philosophers, especially by those engaging in what is often called ‘contemporary analytic’ philosophy.

The rigor of formal logic can have a clarifying effect, especially in matters related to philosophy of language and in matters related to metaphysics. Ordinary organic human language, with its idioms and ambiguities, can muddle what should be precise discussions. Natural language contains metaphors which are ossified and used unconsciously, to the point that those using the language do not recognize them as metaphors. By contrast, systems of logic, according to Howard Kahane,

have been very useful tools for philosophers, logicians, scientists, and mathematicians. In particular, they have been used by some twentieth century philosophers in their attempt to get a clearer grasp on several of the central problems in philosophy.

But the application of modern symbolic logic to philosophy proper has yielded another, perhaps bitter, kind of fruit. For once the notation and proof technique of predicate logic is employed, important problems come into sharp focus, to which insufficient attention was paid previously.

While logic might allow philosophers to make progress concerning some problems, it uncovers other problems. Famously, e.g., the substitution problems which arise when the verb ‘to be’ is naively regarded as an equation:

Fred is Mike’s brother.
Fred is twenty years old.
Mike's brother is twenty years old.

Fred is smart.
Fred is twenty years old.
Smart is twenty years old.

In addition to the verb ‘to be’ as a copula, a related problem is one of qualities (or ‘properties’) in general. If the proposition that ‘Fred is smart’ is not an equation of the form “a = b”, then what is it? If we answer that it is equivalent to “Fred has smartness,” then we are already deep into the weeds of metaphysical commitment; not that we necessarily wish to avoid such commitment, but we want at least to be aware of such commitments when we make them. We now must explore what ‘smartness’ might be.

We might take ‘smartness’ to be a property. Howard Kahane sets forth some preliminary notions about properties:

There is a long tradition in philosophy which distinguishes properties of objects into two kinds, namely observable, or manifest, properties and dispositional, or power properties.

What we might understand under the heading ‘observable’ would include not only direct sensory perception, but also matters which are indirectly observable (e.g., seeing a photograph of the object instead of seeing the object itself, if the object has the property in question, or seeing evidence about the object, or seeing data recorded about the object, etc.), and matters which are only in principle observable (e.g., we can’t observe whether there is a purple rock on the far side of the planet Pluto, but we can understand what it would mean to make such an observation if it were possible).

Observable properties of objects can be recognized by means of one or more of the five senses, while dispositional properties cannot. Thus, we can observe that something burns, but not that it is flammable (although if it is flammable, and if we ignite it, we can observe that it burns). And we can see that something bends, but not that it is flexible (although if it is flexible, and we apply suitable pressure to it, then we can observe that it bends). Burning and bending are observable properties, while flammability and flexibility are dispositional properties.

The question arises, what, if any, metaphysical commitments we make, if we accept what Kahane calls dispositional properties. Various readings of ‘dispositional properties’ are possible. A more empiricist reading would say that such properties are a linguistic shorthand for expressing the proposition that ‘objects like this have been observed having such a property’ - i.e., to say that ‘paper is flammable’ would be to say that ‘some paper objects have been observed to burn.’

On the other hand, a more metaphysical reading of ‘dispositional properties’ would say that there is a fact about an object which justifies our using the word ‘flammable’ about it. There is something called ‘flammability’ which is a feature of this object. If we say that ‘some liquids are flammable and others are not,’ then we are asserting a difference between the two sets of liquids, a difference which would exist independently of anyone having observed any of them actually burning.

Now, someone might argue that there is no metaphysical commitment in this latter reading of ‘dispositional properties,’ because an explanation could be made using the vocabulary of chemistry, which is an allegedly hard-nosed empirical science. But a closer examination of any such explanation might reveal that the chemist, in explaining 'flammability,' would in fact be invoking further dispositional properties, perhaps by means of making counterfactual statements about how a substance would act under circumstances other than the actual circumstances.

Obviously, the dispositional, nonobservable, property of being flammable is closely connected to the observable property of burning, for to say that something is flammable is to say that it has the power to burn, or the disposition to burn, under certain circumstances. Similarly, the dispositional property of being flexible is closely connected to the observable property of bending, for to say that something is flexible is to say that it has the power to bend, or the disposition to bend, under certain conditions. And so on.

The assertion that 'dispositional properties' are in fact real facts belongs to a view which might roughly be called Aristotelian. The view that such properties are actually a sort of linguistic shorthand for expressing what has been observed and for expressing patterns in what has been observed is a view which might be described as empiricist, as empiricism is exemplified by the likes of David Hume and A.J. Ayer

To argue that an object's burning is caused, at least in part, by its flammability, would seem to some empiricists a double sin: first, to have posited flammability which is not even indirectly observable; second, to have posited a 'cause' for an observed property. Thus Hume's disposition (!) to argue against dispositional properties is an organic outgrowth of his general attack on causation. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume writes:

Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity, and transparency of water, that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire, that it would consume him. No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes which produced it, or the effects which will arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact.

Hume, then, would assert that the only statement which can be taken at face value is something like 'I saw the paper burning at time T1 and at place P1' or that 'the paper was observed burning, etc.' or that 'the rock was observed to be purple at time T1, etc.' Any mention of 'flammability' or a 'disposition to burn' would be understood, at best, to be linguistic shorthand, or, at worst, to be a false, or meaningless, or nonsensical, or senseless utterance - to which category of utterance Hume would assign all metaphysical discourse.

Schopenhauer's Pessimism

As in so many philosophical questions, the investigation of Schopenhauer's pessimism must begin with an attempt to clearly define a key piece of vocabulary. And as with so many philosophical terms, the word 'pessimism' finds a different use in everyday life among ordinary people than it finds among philosophers.

The common meaning of ‘pessimism’ is, according to one common dictionary,

a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen; a lack of hope or confidence in the future.

In this pedestrian sense, a ‘pessimist’ is one who expects bad weather, expects his favorite sports team to lose, expects illness, poverty, and difficult times; in this sense, a pessimist, confronted with a person, place, thing, idea, or event will identify and expound on its disadvantages and drawbacks.

But the word ‘pessimist’ is used in a radically different way by Schopenhauer and by many other philosophers. We must clearly distinguish between these two ways of using the word, and we must dismiss from our minds entirely the ordinary everyday meaning.

For Arthur Schopenhauer, born in 1788, the word ‘pessimism’ refers to a belief that the world is not perfectible. Schopenhauer, in asserting pessimism, means to say that the empirical real world in which we live is necessarily not perfect, and this cannot be changed. We might be able to change the world, but we cannot change the fact that the world is necessarily imperfect.

In answering the question about Schopenhauer’s understanding of pessimism, we raise further questions. What does it mean for the world to be perfect? What does it mean for the world to be imperfect? This would include a long list of synonyms: the world necessarily contains some evil; the world is flawed; the world necessarily contains pain and suffering; the world contains injustice and violations of moral law and of natural law.

To sort out what Schopenhauer means, we can look at some salient texts from The World as Will and Representation, originally published as Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung and alternately translated as The World as Will and Idea. Schopenhauer raises the concept of pessimism in the context of comparative religious studies.

All religions, argues Schopenhauer, are most meaningfully analyzed and divided into two groups, not by asking whether they be monotheistic or polytheistic, but rather by asking whether they are optimistic or pessimistic. Optimistic religions, he writes, find the world, as it is, to be self-justified and laudable. Pessimistic religions find the world's condition to be a consequence of our, of humanity’s, guilt; pessimistic religions find that the world should not be as it is, and perhaps should not be at all. Schopenhauer writes:

Den Fundamentalunterschied aller Religionen kann ich nicht, wie durchgängig geschieht, darin setzen, ob sie monotheistisch, polytheistisch, pantheistisch, oder atheistisch sind; sondern nur darin, ob sie optimistisch oder pessimistisch sind, d.h. ob sie das Dasein dieser Welt als durch sich selbst gerechtfertigt darstellen, mithin es loben und preisen, oder aber es betrachten als etwas, das nur als Folge unserer Schuld begriffen werden kann und daher eigentlich nicht sein sollte, indem sie erkennen, dass Schmerz und Tod nicht liegen können in der ewigen, ursprünglichen, unabänderlichen Ordnung der Dinge, in Dem, was in jedem Betracht sein sollte.

Schopenhauer’s understanding of pessimism complements his understanding of optimism. He expounds this by means of his understanding of various religions - Judaism, Christianity, and pagan mythology. The reader should bear in mind that Schopenhauer is discussing these religions as he understood them, which raises a further question of whether he understood them correctly. But to understand his use of ‘pessimism’ and ‘optimism,’ we will grant for the moment Schopenhauer’s understandings of those religions to him.

Schopenhauer sees Buddhism and Christianity as the two great pessimistic religions, by which he means that they understand the human condition to be one of suffering and sin. By contrast, he sees Judaism, Islam, and Greco-Roman mythologies as optimistic religions. He explains:

Die Kraft, vermöge welcher das Christentum zunächst das Judentum und dann das Griechische und Römische Heidentum überwinden konnte, liegt ganz allein in seinem Pessimismus, in dem Eingeständnis, dass unser Zustand ein höchst elender und zugleich sündlicher ist, während Judentum und Heidentum optimistisch waren.

Schopenhauer argues that the crucifixion of Jesus was a concrete instance of the conflict between optimism and pessimism. Judaism, embodying optimism, could not tolerate Jesus, who embodied pessimism. As he phrases it,

Sind es doch, der evangelischen Darstellung zufolge, gerade die orthodoxen Anhänger des Alten Testaments, welche den Kreuzestod des Stifters herbeiführen, weil sie seine Lehren im Widerstreit mit den ihrigen finden. Im besagten dritten Buche der Stromata des Klemens tritt der Antagonismus zwischen Optimismus, nebst Theismus, einerseits, und Pessimismus, nebst asketischer Moral, andererseits, mit überraschender Deutlichkeit hervor.

Because he has cited a book by Clement of Alexandria, Schopenhauer offers an additional explanation about the role of Gnosticism in the conflict between optimistic Judaism and pessimistic Christianity. But Schopenhauer's comments about Gnosticism are beside the point. His argumentation becomes dense at this point. Having begun with his assertion that Christianity and Buddhism are pessimistic religions, and that Islam and Judaism are optimistic religions, he goes on to examine an internecine conflict within Christianity, the dispute between orthodoxy and Gnosticism. Schopenhauer mines Clement's comments about Gnosticism; Clement is himself of complex figure, opposing, yet influenced by, Gnosticism.

More to the point is his (mis)understanding of the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He rather simplistically identifies the Old Testament with Judaism and the New Testament with Christianity. He thereby ignores the fact that Judaism is something more than the Old Testament, ignores the fact that Christianity is a construct which arose in accumulated traditions which extend beyond the New Testament, ignores the fact that the New Testament is a thoroughly Jewish set of texts, ignores the fact that Jesus is thoroughly Jewish, and ignores the complex and subtle interplay between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In addition, he ignores the distinction between Jesus and Christianity. He ignores a few other things as well. Schopenhauer rather blithely writes:

Dasselbe ist gegen die Gnostiker gerichtet, welche eben Pessimismus und Askese, namentlich enkrateia (Enthaltsamkeit jeder Art, besonders aber von aller Geschlechtsbefriedigung) lehrten; weshalb Klemens sie lebhaft tadelt. Dabei schimmert aber zugleich durch, dass schon der Geist des Alten Testaments mit dem des Neuen Testaments in diesem Antagonismus steht.

While Schopenhauer might not be good at descriptive comparative religious studies, he nonetheless makes a noteworthy contribution to philosophy by his examination and explication of his notions of pessimism and optimism.

Somewhat more accurately, but still perhaps not entirely grasping the spirit of Judaism, he notes that the Fall is an event which points more to a pessimistic religion than to an optimistic one. Maybe he underestimates the permeating presence of the Fall throughout the Old Testament. He sees it as an exception rather than a leitmotif in the text:

Denn, abgesehen vom Sündenfall, der im Alten Testament wie ein hors d'oeuvre dasteht, ist der Geist des Alten Testaments dem des Neuen Testaments diametral entgegengesetzt: jener optimistisch, dieser pessimistisch.

Having cited Clement of Alexandria, Schopenhauer continues his sidebar discussion of Gnosticism, which is not directly to the point of pessimism, but does contain in passing some remarks which are to the point. Although Clement attacks Gnosticism for its pessimism, Schopenhauer uses Clement's text as a guide to philosophical antecedents. Those whom Clement dismisses, Schopenhauer sees as pioneers:

Er sieht darin ihren schreienden Undank, Feindschaft und Empörung gegen Den, der die Welt gemacht hat, den gerechten Demiurgos, dessen Werk sie selbst seien und dennoch von seinen Schöpfungen Gebrauch zu machen verschmäheten, in gottloser Rebellion »die naturgemäße Gesinnung verlassend« (antitassomenoi tô poiêtê tô sphôn, – – – enkrateis tê pros ton pepoiêkota echthra, mê boulomenoi chrêsthai tois hyp' autou ktistheisin, – – asebei theomachia tôn kata physin ekstantes logismôn). – Dabei will er, in seinem heiligen Eifer, den Markioniten nicht ein Mal die Ehre der Originalität lassen, sondern, gewaffnet mit seiner bekannten Gelehrsamkeit, hält er ihnen vor, und belegt es mit den schönsten Anführungen, dass schon die alten Philosophen, dass Herakleitos und Empedokles, Pythagoras und Plato, Orpheus und Pindaros, Herodot und Euripides, und noch die Sibylle dazu, die jammervolle Beschaffenheit der Welt tief beklagt, also den Pessimismus gelehrt haben.

Moving into a lesser-known set of religious examples, Schopenhauer looks to the language and religion of Persia's Zend culture, which is Zoroastrianism. He sees Zoroastrianism as attempting some manner of middle ground in the tension between optimism and pessimism. Following the thought of Johann Gottlieb Rhode, Schopenhauer (wrongly) identifies Zoroastrianism as the ancestor of Judaism.

While Zoroastrianism, in Schopenhauer's understanding, attempts to balance optimism and pessimism, Judaism, in Schopenhauer's view, tilts the table toward optimism. Zoroastrianism's two gods, one good and one evil, represent the balance; in Judaism's subordination of Satan as inferior to God, Schopenhauer sees a loss of balance.

Schopenhauer's reading of Zoroastrianism is somewhat idiosyncratic, given that the usual understand of Zoroastrianism is a stalemate between good and evil, not between optimism and pessimism. The view which Schopenhauer borrows from Rhode about the sources of Judaism is verifiably false, given the dating of Zoroaster himself and the earliest Zoroastrian texts. Judaism was already centuries old by the time Zoroastrianism appeared.

Die Zendreligion hält gewissermaaßen das Mittel, indem sie, dem Ormuzd gegenüber, am Ahriman ein pessimistisches Gegengewicht hat. Aus dieser Zendreligion ist, wie J.G. Rhode, in seinem Buche »Die heilige Sage des Zendvolks«, gründlich nachgewiesen hat, die Judenreligion hervorgegangen: aus Ormuzd ist Jehova und aus Ahriman Satan geworden, der jedoch im Judentum nur noch eine sehr untergeordnete Rolle spielt, ja, fast ganz verschwindet, wodurch denn der Optimismus die Oberhand gewinnt und nur noch der Mythos vom Sündenfall, der ebenfalls (als Fabel von Meschian und Meschiane) aus dem Zend-Avesta stammt, als pessimistisches Element übrig bleibt, jedoch in Vergessenheit gerät, bis er, wie auch der Satan, vom Christentum wieder aufgenommen wird.

Per his usual method, Schopenhauer seems to delight in finding unusual examples to prove, or at least illustrate, his theses. Pondering the endless cycles of attack and death among carnivorous animals, he turns to an obscure bit of short fiction, a French story published in 1859, about a squirrel eaten by a snake; the snake, aided by magical powers, causes the squirrel to walk into its waiting jaws. Schopenhauer's point is this: only a pessimistic view of the world - again, 'pessimism' in his sense of the word - is plausible, given the effort with which one generation produces another, only so that these offspring may one day be eaten by predators. Schopenhauer gives numerous examples of the extreme effort which animals put into their survival, and into the survival of their offspring, only to be part of a long food chain in which a predator, having eaten its prey, becomes in turn prey to another predator. For him, this is 'the will to live' made concrete:

Diese Geschichte ist nicht bloß in magischer Hinsicht wichtig, sondern auch als Argument zum Pessimismus: dass ein Tier vom andern überfallen und gefressen wird, ist schlimm, jedoch kann man sich darüber beruhigen: aber dass so ein armes unschuldiges Eichhorn, neben dem Neste mit seinen Jungen sitzend, gezwungen ist, schrittweise, zögernd, mit sich selbst kämpfend und wehklagend dem weit offenen Rachen der Schlange entgegenzugehen und mit Bewusstsein sich hineinstürzen, – ist so empörend und himmelschreiend, dass man fühlt wie Recht Aristoteles hat zu sagen: hê physis daimonia men esti, ou de theia. – Was für eine entsetzliche Natur ist diese, der wir angehören!

Schopenhauer’s understanding of Judaism is arguably incomplete. His understanding of the relationships between Christianity, Judaism, Jesus, the Old Testament, and the New Testament is deficient. His understanding ignores that the Old Testament contains in embryonic form many New Testament concepts. His understanding also ignores that the New Testament sees itself in many ways as an organic extension of the Old Testament. Schopenhauer's knowledge of theology is insufficient.

His development of the concepts of pessimism and optimism, however, are insightful and valuable to philosophy.

He addresses directly a question which lurks beneath the surface of much social, political, anthropological, and religious philosophy: is the world perfectible? is a utopia possible? can human nature be refined and thereby freed from flaw? can humans develop and implement the perfect society?

In political hypothesizing, this question takes the forms of, e.g., Rousseau and Marx, each of whom seems to flirt with the notion that some manner of ideal society can be effectuated. In Schopenhauer's terminology, Rousseau and Marx are optimists. Schopenhauer also explains the mechanism which makes predictable the horrors of the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution: optimists trying to fulfill an optimistic doctrine are prone, on utilitarian calculation, to countenance any and all means to achieve their ends. The utility of a perfect society being infinite, or nearly so, atrocities committed to attain that perfection will be rendered relatively small by comparison.

Despite Schopenhauer's deficient understanding of theology, sacred text, and some religions, his conceptual framework constitutes a significant insight into the natures of various religions. To label Christianity as pessimistic is to capture what theologians call the fallen nature of the world, and to capture what one calls the brokenness of the world. The conversation between Jesus and Pilate has echoes in the words of Malthus, Metternich, and Edmund Burke. A kingdom "not of this world" meant that there was no attempt to establish a paradise or a utopia in this space and time. Jesus urges compassion, meaning that one should aid the poor and suffering, and yet simultaneously urges the sober realism that the poor will always be among us.

(In passing, it should be noted that Malthus is often misunderstood: his main concern was neither the size of the food supply nor any alleged population problems; he was writing to explain that planet earth is a place which will necessarily always contains some suffering. Malthus was a pessimist in Schopenhauer's sense of the word.)

Strictly speaking, Schopenhauer's pessimism does not rule out the establishment of some manner of perfection outside of our spatiotemporal continuum.

Labeling Islam as optimistic crystalizes and makes explicit the rationale which drives the quest for the establishment of a caliphate. Optimism, linked with specific and concrete definitions of 'good', leads to the drive to establish an organization to achieve those conditions. Optimistic religions tend to build institutions to bring about an envisioned society, whereas pessimistic religions seek simply to help the poor and the suffering - those who are vulnerable in society: widows, orphans, foreigners.

Frege in Context

In anybody’s short list of significant philosophers and mathematicians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gottlob Frege will appear near the top. His direct and indirect influence extends to many philosophers and groups of philosophers, including those who were influenced by him in the sense of reacting against him.

Although Frege’s work may be characterized as late modern or early contemporary, he nonetheless has a historical context. His seminal work symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics might mislead us into thinking that he does not have a connection to great thinkers of earlier centuries. We will see, however, that to understand Frege in his historical context, we must view him in terms of John Locke and John Stuart Mill.

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke address, among many other topics, language and reference. Locke asserts that the only possible referent of a word is an idea in the mind of the speaker (or writer). But, he writes, men mistakenly assume that their words can also refer to two other things: the ideas in the minds of others and the (physical) objects themselves. Leaving aside the latter comment about objects, the former comment about ideas in the minds of other leads us to considerations about reference.

The radical skeptic can issue all manner of objections to talk about ideas in the minds of others, let alone words referring to such ideas. But even the less-than-radical skeptic, one who is sympathetic to such a scheme of reference, will have concerns: Locke is such a one, and he raises such concerns. He imagines that it’s acceptable to posit that the speaker’s words may refer to ideas in the minds of others. But even if this is allowed, further problems remain.

If the speaker’s words can simultaneously refer to ideas in the speaker’s mind and idea in the listener’s mind, how can we know that any one word will refer to the same idea in the speaker’s mind and the listener’s mind? If the speaker says the word ‘x’ and it refers to the idea x in the speaker’s mind, how do we know that it also refers to the idea x in the listener's mind, and not, e.g., to the idea y?

This question gives rise to Locke’s famous inverted spectrum example, and also to later examples like those given by Quine in his book Word and Object. These, and other types of qualia inversion problems, isolate the question of whether a word can refer reliably to an idea in more than one mind. Locke writes:

Words are often secretly referred first to the ideas supposed to be in other men’s minds. But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and immediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker; yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two other things.

Although acknowledging the problem of inverted qualia - indeed, originating the problem - Locke also seems to be content to rely on experience, to the extent that for the practical purpose of daily life, language suffices. Whether or not the qualia be actually inverted - Locke points out that we could never know this - language would work as long as the inversion were consistent. He continues:

First, they suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds also of other men, with whom they communicate: for else they should talk in vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea were such as by the hearer were applied to another, which is to speak two languages. But in this men stand not usually to examine, whether the idea they, and those they discourse with have in their minds be the same: but think it enough that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common acceptation of that language; in which they suppose that the idea they make it a sign of is precisely the same to which the understanding men of that country apply that name.

Finally, Locke returns to his initial assertion, that words refer properly only to the ideas in the mind of the speaker. The fact that we do, in practical daily life, act as if words also referred to ideas in the minds of listeners, or to physical objects themselves, is something other than reference properly construed. Locke therefore distinguishes between reference and what he calls the ‘common acceptation’ of an utterance (or of a writing). Ian Hacking writes:

Does Locke support this doctrine of ‘secrete reference’? I think the very phrase is loaded with Locke’s characteristic irony. ‘Give me leave here to say’, he continues in case anyone has failed to take the point, ‘it is a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own minds.’ Signifying, remember, is a relation of precedence-or-consequence. So what Locke says seems correct. Note that another term is used in this passage, ‘the common acceptation’ of a word in a language. This is something quite different from signifying. Let us take, for example, the role of a name in some speech. Had the real Mark Antony said, ‘I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him’, there would have been the idea of Caesar present in Mark Antony’s mind. That is what the name ‘Caesar’ signifies, for Antony. The third plebeian, despite the inane responses Shakespeare puts in his mouth, doubtless also has some idea (possibly not Antony’s) of Caesar. That is what the name signifies for him. In contrast, there is the actual person referred to, recently deceased. Finally there is, perhaps, something else in the public domain: everyone realizes that Rome’s tyrant is under discussion. This shared cognition we might, borrowing Locke’s phrase, call the common acceptation of the name ‘Caesar’. Common acceptation enables Antony to address the multitude. It is whatever is ‘public’ about the established use of a word.

With this Lockean framework, the work of Gottlob Frege is seen in context. One of Frege’s many accomplishments was to express more specifically and more technically that at which Locke had only hinted, or expressed with less exactitude. Ian Hacking continues:

The distinctions required were not made efficiently until the late nineteenth century, when Gottlob Frege had to legislate a distinction into the German language in order to avoid confusion. He took the word Sinn - which has been translated ‘meaning’ but in English is nowadays called ‘sense’ - as common acceptation. By way of contrast he used the word Bedeutung - equally translated ‘meaning’ but now fixed with the English word ‘reference’.

In of the famous passages which earned Frege his place in the history of philosophy, he introduces his distinction between sense and reference - the distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung.

The regular connexion between a sign, its sense, and its reference is of such a kind that to the sign there corresponds a definite sense and to that in turn a definite reference, while to a given reference (an object) there does not belong only a single sign. The same sense has different expressions in different languages or even in the same language. To be sure, exceptions to this regular behaviour occur. To every expression belonging to a complete totality of signs, there should certainly correspond a definite sense; but natural languages often do not satisfy this condition, and one must be content if the same word has the same sense in the same context. It may perhaps be granted that every grammatically well-formed expression representing a proper name always has a sense. But this is not to say that to the sense there also corresponds a reference. The words ‘the celestial body most distant from the Earth’ have a sense, but it is very doubtful if they also have a reference. The expression ‘the least rapidly convergent series’ has a sense; but it is known to have no reference, since for every given convergent series, another convergent, but less rapidly convergent, series can be found. In grasping a sense, one is not certainly assured of a reference.

Here arises an interpretive question in the history of philosophy. Shall we spin the credit in Locke’s favor or in Frege’s favor? If we tilt it toward Locke, we might say that Locke conceptualized and expressed an important distinction about language, and that Frege merely tidied up the vocabulary used to express it. If we tilt it toward Frege, we might say that Locke was only vaguely aware this distinction, and that Frege uncovered and discovered and clearly articulated it. Ian Hacking writes:

Frege also considers something analogous to what Locke would have called the idea signified by a sign. Frege speaks of the ‘idea’ associated with a word, in contrast to the word’s sense and reference. There has been much philosophy between Locke and Frege, and the word ‘idea’ has not stayed in its place, especially when translated into German as Vorstellung and back again. But enough has been preserved to take the continuation of this translated passage as read:

Hacking then goes on to cite this passage from Frege. Over the years, competing translations of Frege’s works have been published, and the translation of some of his central vocabulary items has become a question. For example, Sinn and Bedeutung have been rendered variously as sense, reference, referent, meaning, and significance. Thus the question of which translation one is reading becomes important. In Max Black’s translation, the text reads:

The reference and sense of a sign are to be distinguished from the associated idea. If the reference of a sign is an object perceivable by the senses, my idea of it is an internal image, arising from memories of sense impressions which I have had and acts, both internal and external, which I have performed. Such an idea is often saturated with feeling; the clarity of its separate parts varies and oscillates. The same sense is not always connected, even in the same man, with the same idea. The idea is subjective: one man’s idea is not that of another. There result, as a matter of course, a variety of differences in the ideas associated with the same sense. A painter, a horseman, and a zoologist will probably connect different ideas with the name ‘Bucephalus’. This constitutes an essential distinction between the idea and the sign's sense, which may be the common property of many and therefore is not a part of a mode of the individual mind For one can hardly deny that mankind has a common store of thoughts which is transmitted from one generation to another.

With Locke, Frege is content to leave the word ‘idea’ somewhat ambiguous. According to Frege, it can include sense-impressions, acts, memories of sense-impressions, memories of acts, and even objects of perception:

We can include with ideas the direct experiences in which sense-impressions and acts themselves take the place of the traces which they have left in the mind. The distinction is unimportant for our purpose, especially since memories of sense-impressions and acts always help to complete the perceptual image. One can also understand direct experience as including any object, in so far as it is sensibly perceptible or spatial.

Yet Frege is clear that ‘sense’ must be distinct from ‘idea’ - even if ‘idea’ is left a bit vague. What is here rendered as ‘idea’ is Vorstellung which had served as a piece of Kantian jargon, and its appearance raises questions about to which extent Frege might be importing Kant’s psychology. For Frege, Kant’s metaphysics might be largely irrelevant, because Frege seems more concerned with logic and language. Frege's word Gedanke is here rendered as 'thought' and would become the topic of another famous essay by Frege. In any case, Frege's main occupations were Sinn and Bedeutung, and ‘idea’ and ‘thought’ received less of his attention. He is clear that Sinn and ‘idea’ were quite distinct:

Hence it is inadvisable to use the word ‘idea’ to designate something so basically different.

The foundational role which Frege played in the beginning of contemporary philosophy consisted in his emphasis upon language and logic, and in his task of clarifying mechanisms by which both work. To be sure, Frege was a mathematician, and much of his work was with an eye toward mathematical uses of language and logic. Yet the philosophical implications of his own work did not escape him. The Fregean flavor of analytic philosophy permeates its various subdivisions. Milton Munitz writes:

The development of analytic philosophy is a central and important aspect of twentieth-century thought. The term ‘analytic philosophy’, as we have remarked, does not designate a single, tightly organized, unified movement whose adherents subscribe to a well-defined body of commonly shared principles. There is much diversity - sometimes sharp antagonism of thought - among the various subgroups or individual thinkers collected under this heading.

In the diversity of contemporary analytic philosophy, Milton Munitz argues, the unifying thread is Frege. Frege is the point of departure: either one agrees with Frege and extends his work, or one disagrees with Frege and argues for some alternative position, or one explores some topic which has come to attention because of Frege.

Yet despite this diversity, the utility of using the label ‘analytic philosophy’ derives from two principle considerations. First, there is enough (even if not total) unity to warrant the use of a common classificatory label for those philosophers whose broad orientation is ‘analytic’ in contradistinction to those falling outside this group. Second, and perhaps more to the point, the movement we are calling ‘analytic philosophy’ has special links to the germinal ideas of Frege. The multiple interconnections and influences among analytic philosophers are illuminated when seen as so many diverse offshoots of Frege’s work. This is not to say that all analytic philosophers are 'Fregeans' in one form or another. This is emphatically not so. Many, to be sure, were directly influenced by Frege. They undertook to assimilate, interpret, and adapt what they found of value in Frege’s work in their own thought. But even among these some found points on which they diverged from or criticized Frege. (Frege himself, for that matter, did not have a monolithic, unchanged set of doctrines to which he adhered.) Nevertheless, within the analytic movement there is by and large a direct line from Frege to other thinkers in which we can note a carrying out of an interpretation or amplification of Frege's themes, doctrinal emphases, and philosophic viewpoint. On the other hand, as we trace the unfolding of analytic philosophy, there are other component movements or individual thinkers whose characteristic theses and claims are best seen as reactions to those who had a more direct or sympathetic relation to Frege’s views. Here the picture gets more complicated as we seek to follow the multiple crisscrossing interconnections. Suffice it to say for the moment that even the latter post-Fregean analytic movements are better understood when seen in terms of their place in relation to the Fregean matrix and starting point. I shall not now attempt to work out the relevant details of this observation, but will do so later at appropriate stages of our exposition. Yet it will be helpful to illustrate, in a preliminary way, the sort of thing I have mind.

Although Frege may be the foundation for contemporary analytic philosophy, he did not arise ex nihilo, as we have seen: he arises, in part, in a Lockean context. Saul Kripke notes that Frege also arise in the setting of John Stuart Mill’s thought about proper names:

Now, what is the relation between names and descriptions? There is a well known doctrine of John Stuart Mill, in his book A System of Logic, that names have denotation but no connotation. To use one of his examples, when we use the name ‘Dartmouth’ to describe a certain locality in England, it may be so called because it lies at the mouth of the Dart. But even, he says, had the Dart (that’s a river) changed its course so that Dartmouth no longer lay at the mouth of the Dart, we could still with propriety call this place ‘Dartmouth’, even though the name may suggest that it lies at the mouth of the Dart. Changing Mill’s terminology, perhaps we should say that a name such as ‘Dartmouth’ does have a ‘connotation’ to some people, namely, it does connote (not to me - I never thought of this) that any place called ‘Dartmouth’ lies at the mouth of the Dart. But then in some way it doesn’t have a ‘sense’. At least, it is not part of the meaning of the name ‘Dartmouth’ that the town so named lies at the mouth of the Dart. Someone who said that Dartmouth did not lie at the Dart’s mouth would not contradict himself.

Even as contemporary philosophers who are staunchly anti-Fregean are nonetheless working in a Fregean context, so also Frege himself was working to some extent in Mill's context. Frege argues directly against Mill. Saul Kripke writes:

But the classical tradition of modern logic has gone very strongly against Mill’s view. Frege and Russell both thought, and seemed to arrive at these conclusions independently of each other, that Mill was wrong in a very strong sense: really a proper name, properly used, simply was a definite description abbreviated or disguised. Frege specifically said that such a description gave the sense of the name.

Mill’s view of proper nouns was that they were directly linked to their referents: that they referred directly, not by means of a Fregean sense. Saul Kripke will side with Mill against Frege on this question:

The modern logical tradition, as represented by Frege and Russell, seems to hold that Mill was wrong about singular names, but right about general names. More recent philosophy has followed suit, except that, in the case of both proper names and natural kind terms, it often replaces the notion of defining properties by that of a cluster of properties, only some of which need to be satisfied in each particular case.

While Saul Kripke embraces Mill’s view of proper nouns, he reject Mill’s view of common nouns - or he rejects what he takes to be Mill’s view of common nouns. Some scholars question whether Kripke understood Mill properly on this point. Stephen Schwartz writes:

Saul Kripke in his revolutionary and influential series of lectures from the early 1970s (later published as the book Naming and Necessity) famously resurrected John Stuart Mill’s theory of proper names. Kripke at the same time rejected Mill’s theory of general terms. According to Kripke, many natural kind terms do not fit Mill’s account of general terms and are closer to proper names. Unfortunately, Kripke and his followers ignored key passages in Mill’s A System of Logic in which Mill enunciates a sophisticated and detailed theory of natural kind terms that anticipates and is in some ways superior to Kripke’s.

Frege’s notion of Sinn was originally formulated as the way in which reference was made to an object. His famous example was the planet Venus, which is known both as ‘the morning star’ and as ‘the evening star’ - the same referent with two different senses. Thus, for Frege, Sinn was determined by a criterion: how one referred to an object. Later Fregeans would formulate Sinn as a set of criteria, from among which several could be chosen. Kripke writes:

The modern logical tradition, as represented by Frege and Russell, disputed Mill on the issue of singular names, but endorsed him on that of general names. Thus all terms, both singular and general, have a ‘connotation’ or Fregean sense. More recent theorists have followed Frege and Russell, modifying their views only by replacing the notion of a sense as given by a particular conjunction of properties with that of a sense as given by a ‘cluster’ of properties, only enough of which need apply. The present view, directly reversing Frege and Russell, (more or less) endorses Mill’s view of singular terms, but disputes his view of general terms.

According to Frege, the Sinn of a proper noun was a compressed description. A proper noun like ‘Aristotle’ contained, argues Frege, in a hidden way, a description like “the teacher of Alexander” or “a student of Plato” - Frege states:

The sense of a proper name is grasped by everybody who is sufficiently familiar with the language or totality of designations to which it belongs; but this serves to illuminate only a single aspect of the reference, supposing it to have one. Comprehensive knowledge of the reference would require us to say immediately whether any given sense belongs to it. To such knowledge we never attain.

Working out the example of ‘Aristotle,’ Frege continues:

In the case of an actual proper name such as ‘Aristotle’ opinions as to the sense may differ. It might, for instance, be taken to be the following: the pupil of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Anybody who does this will attach another sense to the sentence ‘Aristotle was born in Stagira’ than will a man who takes as the sense of the name: the teacher of Alexander the Great who was born in Stagira. So long as the reference remains the same, such variations of sense may be tolerated, although they are to be avoided in the theoretical structure of a demonstrative science and ought not to occur in a perfect language.

While it is proper to view Frege as foundational to contemporary analytical philosophy, it is also proper to view him in the context of Locke and Mill. In this way, contemporary philosophy is seen in a way which emphasizes its continuity with the past.

Is Boltzmann a Phenomenologist?

Anyone familiar with the secondary literature on Ludwig Boltzmann knows that it is unusual, even odd, to refer to him as a phenomenologist. Yet a case can be made for doing precisely that. Arguments for viewing Boltzmann as a phenomenologist might even be plausible or persuasive. Such arguments will touch upon those points which empiricism and phenomenology have in common, or those points at which they come into contact with each other.

Ludwig Boltzmann, whose influence extended to Einstein and Planck, centered his notion of physics, and more broadly of natural sciences and of observational sciences, around phenomenology. Given his phenomenological leanings, he rejected any extensive role for the a priori in sciences, and rejected much of Kant’s version of physics.

Yet in some ways he seems to explicitly reject phenomenology. There is a tension within Boltzmann's thought: while arguing against phenomenologists, and eschewing the label of phenomenologist, he appears to embrace and even rigorously apply some phenomenological principles.

Both in science and in mathematics, Boltzmann sought a synthetic method which he considered to be simpler. Simplicity as a decision procedure for choosing between competing theories, which otherwise map nicely to the same data sets, is a familiar concept in the philosophy of science. Ernst Mach was roughly contemporary to Boltzmann. Alluding to Mach, Boltzmann wrote in 1892 about an economy of effort, which might be an analogue to simplicity as the concept is used in the philosophy of science concerning competing theories:

In mathematics and geometry the return from purely analytic to constructive methods and illustration by means of models was at first occasioned by a need for economy of effort. Although this seems to be purely practical and obvious, it is just here that we are in an area where a whole new kind of methodological speculations has grown up which were given most precise and ingenious expression by Mach, who states straight out that the aim of all science is only economy of effort.

The ambiguity in Boltzmann's relationship with phenomenology may arise from his use of some form of the principle of verification. Boltzmann's career path touched Ernst Mach's at a number of points, and Mach was a founding member of the Vienna Circle. The Circle was, of course, strongly linked to the verificationist understanding of meaning. Boltzmann was perhaps less interested in meaning and language, and used the verificationist principle more in the context of the philosophy of science. Inasmuch as verificationism is part of a radical empiricist program, and because both empiricism and phenomenology take raw sense-data as their foundation or point of departure, there is an overlap between verificationism and phenomenology, and this overlap gives rise to Boltzmann's ambiguity regarding phenomenology.

The more radical versions of empiricism and phenomenology take sense-data not only as a point of departure, but as the only possible point of departure - not as a foundation, but as the only possible foundation. The overlap between the two is highlighted in their more radical versions. Because much of Boltzmann's work in physics centered around particles invisible to the naked eye, the usual caveats about "indirect" or "in principle" observation apply to empirical verification of scientific theories. Paul Pojman writes that Ernst Mach

became embroiled in a long-standing dispute with Boltzmann, propounder of the kinetic theory of gasses. Boltzmann and Mach ended up agreeing in essence: if atomic theory was fruitful it should be used, but adopted what today might be considered an anti-metaphysical stance toward a theory that was still largely unsubstantiated. It is generally agreed that it was not until 1905 with Einstein's study of Brownian motion that the kinetic theory of molecules found full verification.

Consistently applying the phenomenological method, while seemingly denying that he was a phenomenologist, Boltzmann offered a critique of Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald. Ostwald had wanted to relegate matter to the status of a construct; for Ostwald, matter was not among the atomic or foundational concepts of the world. As Joachim Schummer wrote,

The more Ostwald became convinced that thermodynamics is the fundamental theory of science — for which he saw evidence in the pioneering works of the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs and others — the more he engaged in natural philosophy. Two aspects may roughly characterize his philosophy. First, he asserted the primacy of energy over matter (matter being only a manifestation of energy) in opposition to widespread scientific materialism. Ostwald reformulated older concepts of dynamism dating back to the 17th-century German polymath Gottfried Leibniz with the principles of thermodynamics to form a new metaphysical interpretation of the world that he named “energetics.” Second, he asserted a form of positivism in the sense of rejecting theoretical concepts that are not strictly founded on empirical grounds. Although energetics found few adherents, the latter position found many contemporary proponents, such as the physicist-philosophers Ernst Mach in Austria and Pierre Duhem in France. As a consequence of his beliefs, for some 15 years Ostwald rejected atomism and was heavily involved in philosophical debates with his atomist colleagues, such as the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, before he acknowledged the growing experimental evidence for the atomic hypothesis in 1909.

Detecting an inconsistency in Ostwald’s views, Boltzmann noted that it was equally unfounded to take energy as foundational or atomic to the universe. The arguments leveled against matter, or against the reality of matter, can be effectively and equally reformulated and leveled against energy. Boltzmann, again with Mach, sees matter and energy as equally derivative. What is foundational, as far as anything can be foundational in phenomenology, are sense-data. In a consistent phenomenological system, sensations are taken as the given. In 1904, Boltzmann wrote:

Mach pointed out that we are given only the law-like course of our impressions and ideas, whereas all physical magnitudes, atoms, molecules, forces, energies and so on are mere concepts for the economical representation and illustration of these law-like relations of our impressions and ideas. These last are thus the only thing that exists in the first instance, physical concepts being merely mental additions of our own. Ostwald understood only one half of this proposition, namely that atoms did not exist; at once he asked: what then does exist? To this his answer was that it was energy that existed. In my view this answer is quite opposed to Mach’s outlook, for which energy as much as matter must be regarded as a symbolic expression of certain relations between perceptions and of certain equations amongst the given phenomena.

Although Boltzmann was not in the mainstream of phenomenology, he is nonetheless a phenomenologist of some sort. Admittedly, some scholars refuse to classify his as such. Neither is he an idealist, in the sense of George Berkeley, but he veers close to some type of idealism. Manfred Grunwald corroborates Boltzmann’s influence, but disputes his phenomenology and idealism, when he writes:

Der berühmte Physiker und materialistiche Denker hat auf die weltanschaulichen Auffassungen Plancks und Einsteins großen Einfluß ausgeübt.

The question of whether radical empiricism and radical phenomenology are finally identical lies at the core of the question of whether or not Boltzmann is to be counted as some type of phenomenologist. His rejection of anything which he saw as metaphysical nudges him in the direction of empiricism. If it nudges him far enough into empiricism, and if empiricism at some point becomes one with phenomenological approaches, then we might be correct to label Boltzmann a phenomenologist, despite his own objections to that label, and despite a large body of respectable secondary literature which also declines to call him a phenomenologist.

Framed more broadly, the question emerges as this: is every empiricist a phenomenologist? is every empiricism a phenomenology? If we answer 'no' then we must articulate the distinction between phenomenology and empiricism. Alternatively, we can see phenomenology as a methodology within empiricism.

A surprising connection between Boltzmann's anti-Kantian view of physics and his social and ethical views arises from his interest in Darwin. Boltzmann's affection for Darwinism, however, gives rise to some methodological questions. Does Darwinism require Boltzmann to abandon the rigor with which he usually follows his phenomenological method? Can the arguments which Boltzmann directs against Kant and against Kantianism also be directed against Darwin and Darwinism? Manfred Grunwald continues:

Von Interesse ist Boltzmanns Stellungnahme zum Apriorismus. Er kritisierte den Apriorismus vor allem von dem einem Standpunkt, der sich aus der Entwicklungstheorie Darwins ergibt. Die sogenannte Denkgesetze hätten sich nach dem biologischen Gesetzen der Evolution gebildet und allmälich die Festigkeit aprioristischer Sätze angenommen. Die Einseitigkeit des nur durch die biologische Evolutionstheorie geprägten Herangehens und die Gefahren sozialdarwinistischer Deutungen werden in den Stellungnahmen Boltzmanns zu ethischen Fragen deutlich. Handlungen sind für ihn richtig und gut, soweit sie der Fortentwicklung der lebenden Materie dienen. Das Grundproblem der Ethik sah Boltzmann in der Beziehung zwischen der Behauptung oder Unterordnung des Willens eines Individuums und der zu fördernden Existenz eines Ganzen (Familie, Stamm, Menschheit). Einerseits behauptete er, daß sich aus den primitiven Formen der Materie, in Pflazen und Tieren, anzutreffenden Fähigkeiten (Vererbung, Zuchtwahl, Wahrnehmung, Willen, Lust, Schmerz) und ihrer quantitativen Steigerung das Denken und Wollen, das künstlerische Schaffen, die wissenschaftliche Forschung und das moralische Verhaltung der Menschen hinreichend erklären ließen. Andererseits erklärte er, daß er nur die »;naturwissenschaftliche begreifliche Seite« betrachte. Boltzmann lehnte die Verbindung naturwissenschaftlicher und religiöser Begriffe ab, weil beide aus gänzlich verschiedenen Bereichen stamman. Es zeigt sich die bei bürgerlichen Naturwissenschaftlern verbreitete Tendenz, der Religion das Gebiet der Moral zuzuweisen.

To the nature of Boltzmann's phenomenology - for phenomenology it was, if an unorthodox phenomenology - the following passage is in a longer text written by Byong-Chul Park:

As one of the founders of statistical thermodynamics, Boltzmann could not fully endorse the phenomenological method in physics. It is nevertheless an undeniable fact that Boltzmann uses the term 'phenomenology' in such a way that phenomenology in his sense is only concerned with our experience without any hypothesis in dealing with phenomena.

However one might characterize Boltzmann's phenomenology, and however it may compare and contrast to the phenomenological systems of other philosophers, Darwinism would entail a number of hypotheses which Boltzmann's understanding of phenomenology would not admit. In 1886, Boltzmann wrote:

Nowhere less than in natural science does the proposition that the straight path is the shortest turn out to be true. If a general intends to conquer a hostile city, he will not consult his map for the shortest road leading there; rather he will be forced to make the most various detours, every hamlet, even if quite off the path, will become a valuable point of leverage for him, if only he can take it; impregnable places he will isolate. Likewise, the scientist asks not what are the currently most important questions, but “which are at present solvable?” or sometimes merely “in which can we make some small but genuine advance?”

It would seem, then, from Boltzmann's philosophy of science, that the formulation of a grand system explaining the origin of life from lifeless matter, and this billions of years prior to any possible observation, would have no place in sober science. Boltzmann's phenomenological sense of science rejects the grand speculative systematic drive, present already in Kant and manifested grossly in Hegel. But does consistency demand that this sense of science likewise reject Darwinism with its hypotheses about processes which may have happened billions of year prior to any possible observation, with its hypotheses about life arising spontaneously from lifeless matter, and with speculations about matter and time emerging ex nihilo? Has Boltzmann violated his own methodological principles in embracing Darwin?

Boltzmann may have had some sense of the tension between his phenomenological and his non-phenomenological leanings. Note the contrast between the words 'internal' and 'external' in this passage, which he wrote in 1890:

I am of the opinion that the task of theory consists in constructing a picture of the external world that exists purely internally and must be our guiding star in all thought and experiment; that is in completing, as it were, the thinking process and carrying out globally what on a small scale occurs within us whenever we form an idea.

In Boltzmann's philosophy of science, then, theory is a speculative generalization - a projection - a writing large of our thoughts onto the universe. By thus defining 'theory' Boltzmann perhaps wished to avoid the methodological tensions between his attempt to apply a rigorous if idiosyncratic phenomenology and his affection for Darwinism. While not a phenomenologist in any usual sense of the word, he was certainly influenced by phenomenological methodologies. Albert Moyer writes:

Boltzmann did not agree that generalized, phenomenological theories were better equipped to reestablish order than were specialized, atomomechanical hypotheses. Though appreciative of phenomenological theories, he denied that such theories were free from hypotheses or idealizations and hence irrefutable. "Without some departure, however slight, from direct observation," he maintained, "a theory or even an intelligibly connected practical description for predicting the facts of nature cannot exist." Moreover, Boltzmann felt that the usefulness of phenomenological theories was limited merely to summarizing or developing "knowledge previously acquired." On the other hand, specialized and admittedly tentative hypotheses "give the imagination room for play and by boldly going beyond the material at hand afford continual inspiration for new experiments, and are thus pathfinders for the most unexpected discoveries." Consequently, he rejected the accusation that the "development of mathematical methods for the computation of the hypothetical molecular motions has been useless and even harmful." He also felt that the recent web of experiments involving cathode rays and radioactivity added credence to the atomistic viewpoint. Boltzmann was particularly optimistic about statistical mechanics.

Despite his dissimilarity to other phenomenologists, and despite what seems to be his explicit rejection of phenomenology, Boltzmann's sense of methodology retains features of phenomenology. Perhaps aware of this internal tension, some of his statements reflect perhaps an attempt to resolve such possible inconsistencies.