Plato and Science

One of the more quotable lines from Plato's Meno is about the limits of human knowledge. The general topic of the conversation is about virtue. After ruminating about possible definitions of 'virtue', Socrates says that he doesn't know what it is, but that he's going to "examine and seek ... what it may be" or "carry out ... a[n] investigation and inquiry into what it is." The interlocutor challenges him on the possibility of such an investigation:

How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?

One source of the ambiguity which leads to this paradox is the definition of 'know' as a verb. If there is more than one definition, i.e., if 'know' refers to more than one epistemological action, then one could be said to 'know virtue' and to 'not know virtue' simultaneously. Such homonymic cases are often the foundations for jokes and riddles, such as "what do you call a winter athlete from Warsaw? a ski Pole."

If Socrates claims that he does not understand what constitutes virtue, he says that he does not know virtue. But if he simultaneously can identify an instance of virtue, he can claim to know virtue. Perhaps I do not know what constitutes my favorite soup at a restaurant - I do not know its ingredients - but I certainly know this soup when I taste it - I can identify it: a possible solution to Meno's paradox.

In a reverse situation, I might not be able to identify a thing, but I might understand its constituents. Imagine that I've never tasted borscht, but I've learned that it's a soup made with beets and sour cream and often served at room temperature. If I were blindfolded and offered a spoonful of it, I would not be able to identify it - I would not "know" it - although I understand its composition - I "know" it.

To place the paradox in a different context, imagine that you are looking for something which does not exist. Serious scientists spent years looking for a sample of Phlogiston. They "knew" what they were looking for, and yet how can one "know" what does not exist? Likewise, I can "know" what a four-headed swan is, inasmuch as I can conceptualize and make to myself a representation of such a creature; but I cannot "know" a four-headed swan in the sense of being able to recognize or identify it, because it doesn't exist.

The same would be true of aether, more properly called 'Luminiferous aether', which occupied earnest physicists as late as the early 1900's, when Einstein wrestled with the concept; he eventually rejected it, along with almost all other physicists, although he sometimes confusingly used the word 'aether' to speak of a space-time matrix.

Additionally, we can note a connection to Ockham: if I can't "know" something, being able to neither identify it or understand its composition, then I cannot fit it into a chain of causes and effects. Being unable to locate it in a causal sequence, I cannot call it necessary, and therefore am not justified in positing its existence.

Although philosophy is not philology, we nonetheless should take care to recall that Plato's Meno has been translated for those of us who cannot read Greek. To that end, to be thorough, we include an alternate rendering of the passage:

But how will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?

Meno's paradox presents us with richer food for thought than the perhaps more popular but silly aphorisms about "knowing nothing" which Plato sometimes places into the mouth of Socrates.

Ethics in Context

The study of ethics is perhaps unlike other branches of philosophy, inasmuch as it requires some consideration of context. A philosopher who asserts an ethical proposition does so in a social, historical, and cultural context; a reader considers that proposition in a context; an ethical situation occurs in a context.

By highlighting this notion of context, we do not automatically place ourselves among those who denial universal moral principles. Even if one acknowledges such eternal ethical truths, it is undeniable that they find applications in concrete situations, and that those situations vary.

In contrast, a timeless metaphysical truth, e.g., an assertion about the relationship between the physical brain and the metaphysical mind, will also find itself applied in various situations, but the contexts of those situations will not factor significantly into the applications of any universal metaphysical propositions. The mind-body problem is the same for the Frenchman as it is for the Chinaman; the same in 2000 B.C. as it is in 2000 A.D.

Ethical propositions are more affected by context because, although ethics is not psychology, ethics is nonetheless more closely related to psychology than, e.g., metaphysics or symbolic logic. On a meta-level, philosophical considerations, not about ethics, but rather about the way in which ethics is done, are also necessarily contextualized. Perhaps this is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer meant when he wrote:

Rarely perhaps has any generation shown so little interest as ours does in any kind of theoretical or systematic ethics. The academic question of a system of ethics seems to be of all questions the most superfluous. The reason for this is not to be sought in any supposed ethical indifference on the part of our period. On the contrary it arises from the fact that our period, more than any earlier period in the history of the west, is oppressed by a superabounding reality of concrete ethical problems. It was otherwise when the established orders of life were still so stable as to leave room for no more than minor sins of human weakness, sins which generally remained hidden, and when the criminal was removed as abnormal from the horrified or pitying gaze of society. In those conditions ethics could be an interesting theoretical problem.

Lurking behind Bonhoeffer’s prose is a meta-level question: why engage in ethical philosophy? The impetus to ethical philosophy, in contrast to merely concrete moral thought, arises when there are not enough concrete instances of ethical situations to keep the mind occupied. Just as a pilot flying his spacecraft through an asteroid field has little inclination for theoretical physics - being quite occupied with actual mechanics - so the individual fully occupied with actual ethical situations may not be inclined to the analysis of systematic ethics.

Today there are once more villains and saints, and they are not hidden from the public view. Instead of the uniform greyness of the rainy day we now have the black storm-cloud and the brilliant lightning-flash. The outlines stand out with exaggerated sharpness. Reality lays itself bare. Shakespeare’s characters walk in our midst. But the villain and the saint have little or nothing to do with systematic ethical studies. They emerge from primeval depths and by their appearance they tear open the infernal or the divine abyss from which they come and enable us to see for a moment into mysteries of which we had never dreamed. What is worse than doing evil is being evil. It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than of a lover of truth to lie. It is worse when a misanthropist practises brotherly love than when a philanthropist gives way to hatred. Better than truth in the mouth of the liar is the lie. Better than the act of brotherly love on the part of the misanthrope is hatred. One sin, then, is not like another. They do not all have the same weight. There are heavier sins and lighter sins. A falling away is of infinitely greater weight than a falling down. The most shining virtues of him who has fallen away are as black as night in comparison with the darkest lapses of the steadfast.

Just as theoretical conversations about the shape of the earth ended when it was successfully circumnavigated, discussions about good and evil end when both are concretely present. Bonhoeffer’s distinction between “doing evil” and “being evil” bears closer examination. Perhaps it can be explained by analogy to the distinction between accident and essence. Yet to mark a human as essentially evil, or essentially good, seems to violate the laws of human nature, inasmuch as we are enjoined to “call no man good” and yet required to acknowledge the imagio dei in each human. Comparing occasional sins to accidental properties seems plausible, for even the most saintly commit sins, and even the most demonic might act corresponding to virtue. But if good and evil are to be essential in a man, then it would seem only in this way, that it would be a changeable essence - an odd turn of phrase, to be sure, because essence is often defined as that which does not change.

Perhaps a better understanding of Bonhoeffer’s distinction would be the difference between occasional evil act and being in a mode of evil. As in music, there are accidental notes - a sharp or flat which takes the melody momentarily out of key - and there are modes in which an entire melody may be composed: an occasional transgression contrasted with a systematic pattern of transgression.

A third way to see this distinction between “being good” and “doing good” would be teleological: the isolated transgression may be the result of succumbing temporarily to temptation and to desire; the systematic and overarching pursuit of evil, of bringing harm to others, might correspond to Bonhoeffer’s phrase ‘being evil.’

In any case, Bonhoeffer, who is not strictly speaking a philosopher at all, yields perhaps a stimulus for comparing various meta-ethical perspectives.

Types of Ethics

Organizing the many different ethical systems produced by philosophers over the ages, some scholars have divided them into two camps: deontological (duty-oriented) and teleological (goal-oriented). The former tells us to do the right thing because it's the right thing; the latter tells us to do what is needed to achieve the right outcome.

Others have added two more categories: "virtue ethics" (in which actions are seen as arising from, manifesting, and giving information about the character of the agent), and "pragmatic ethics" (in which the social context of the action, i.e., the properties of society - its views on, and response to, the act in question).

Given any number of categories, the critical question is then whether, if some of the categories can be shown to be equivalent, that the number could be reduced. Some scholars even suggest that there is only one category: ethical systems.

In any case, we are discussing categories of systems: in each category, there will be many distinct and mutually exclusive systems.

Professor Alfred Freddoso writes that

Important recent work in ethics signals a healthy shift away from "act-centered" moral theories and toward "character-centered" theories. The medievals, of course, fashioned several subtle and interestingly diverse doctrines of virtue, which could perhaps serve as touchstones for contemporary discussions.

Ethics done in this way identifies and enumerates virtues in the agent. Actions manifest or exemplify those virtues, and so remain secondary while virtues are primary in such an ethical system.

Events and Things

In the natural sciences, or observational sciences, descriptions can be about things or about events. Often we can construct two equivalent descriptions, one thing-centered, and the other event centered. A thing-centered description of magnetism states that a magnet has the power to attract bits of iron in its vicinity. An event-centered description would say that a magnet and a bit of iron moved closer together.

Although such pairs of descriptions may in many cases be equivalent, in other cases, or in other ways, they might not be synonymous. Professor Alfred Freddoso writes:

Some prominent philosophers of science, dissatisfied with basically empiricist conceptions of natural law and scientific explanation, now argue that natural substances are best thought of as nonfree agents endowed with causal powers and that laws of nature are properly expressed by specifications of those powers rather than by generalizations (whether necessary or not) about events. The medieval Aristotelians, despite the inadequacy of their scientific theories, elaborated just such a philosophical conception of nature. Their writings in this area may prove to be illuminating, as has been clear ever since Peter Geach published his penetrating essay on Aquinas in Three Philosophers.

Comparing events to objects, some philosophers have noted that objects can change location, while events cannot. Following Hume, we would think of a magnet as the conjunction of numerous attraction events which occur at different times and places. Following the medievals, we think of a magnet has having the power of attraction, which naturally remains with it when it moves. The medieval view is more intuitive; the burden lies on Hume to show why we would need to override such an intuitive view.

Logic and the University

Although Scholasticism among thinkers like Johannes Scotus Eriugena certainly preceded the formal institution of the university, it is clear that the birth and flourishing of the university in late eleventh century invigorated scholasticism. We can trace the building of intellectual momentum from Charlemagne's educational initiatives to Bologna in 1088. Frederick Copleston writes:

In 910 the abbey of Cluny was founded; and the monasteries of the Cluniac reform, which was introduced into England by St. Dunstan, contributed to

the emergence of Scholasticism. The university would be the result of merging such monasteries - or at least their intellectual powers - with the cathedral schools in the larger cities and the occasional law school.

For example, the monk Abbon, who died in 1004, directed a monastic school on the Loire, where, in addition to the study of the Scriptures and the Fathers, attention was given to grammar, logic, and mathematics.

Logic at that time was built around Aristotle (whose logical works were not lost, but rather had been translated into Latin by Boethius around 520 A.D.), commentary on Aritstotle by Boethius, and Porphyry.

A more prominent figure, however, is Gerbert of Aurillac. Born about 938, Gerbert became a monk of the Clunaic reform and studied

what could still be rescued from Spain after the Islamic invasions of 711. Spain would be slow to develop universities until freed from Muslim oppression. Gerbert managed to gain some understanding of the Arabic philosophy. The Scholastics generally were able to absorb and preserve elements of Arabic philosophy after Islam turned on Arab scholars and purged their work from itself. By the end of the Middle Ages, Europe had more of Arabic philosophy than Arabia. In any case, Gerbert

seems to have acquired some knowledge of Arabic science. Later he became direct of the school at Rheims.

The school at Rheims, founded in the late tenth century, belonged to a group of schools centered on the emerging curriculum of the “liberal arts” and a step closer to the concept of the university.

In his period of teaching at Rheims he lectured on logic; but he is more remarkable for his study both of the classical Latin literature then available and of mathematics.

The early roots would bring forth results when both Scholasticism and the concept of the university were more developed. Alfred Freddoso writes

that the most profound thinkers of the late medieval era (e.g., Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham) viewed logic primarily as a tool, albeit an indispensable one, for dealing with the “big” questions in metaphysics and theology. To illustrate, Aquinas's perceptive discussions of the logic of reduplicative propositions occurs within his treatment of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Again, by the time that Ockham wrote his groundbreaking Summa Logicae, he had already employed almost all his distinctive logical insights in one or another metaphysical or theological context.

The sophisticated and nuanced approach to logic found among the late Scholastics continues to challenge philosophers in the twenty-first century:

the medievals managed to raise some deep questions in philosophical logic which have not been faced squarely by contemporary philosophers. For instance, as a recent work by Fred Sommers suggests, the two-name theory of predication may have been done in more by Fregean fiat than by decisive arguments. Again, one suspects that we could learn something from medieval logicians about the ontological issues surrounding the semantics of past- and future-tense sentences or the use of fictive terms (e.g., 'chimera').

From early Scholasticism to later Scholasticism to contemporary twenty-first century philosophical questions about metaphysics, logic has played a continuously central role.

Thomist Concepts

On Wednesday, March 7, 2012, Professor Tad Schmaltz lectured at the University of Michigan on notions of cognition and will found in Aquinas. Any deficiencies found in this account of Professor Schmaltz's lecture should be assigned to the note-taker and not to Professor Schmaltz.

Aquinas frames human knowledge between two other types of knowledge: between angelic cognition and the sense-cognition of non-human (sub-human) animals (and perhaps plants). Angels are incorruptible and disembodied intellects; their cognition is not the act of a bodily organ and is therefore unconnected with matter. They have a direct knowledge of immaterial forms, because they are directly illuminated by divine light. They perceive without sense-data. Angelic knowledge of matter or material objects is deduced from their knowledge of forms; Thomist forms contain within themselves enough information that every specific instantiation of them can be deduced from them; they are therefore probably somewhat richer than Plato's forms. Angels do not obtain or receive sense-data; one might therefore ask if they are blind and deaf.

By contrast, the cognition of animals, and of any other category of being which might be considered a corruptible material substantial form, is based exclusively upon sense-data. This sensory cognition is devoid of any knowledge of forms; such creatures are necessary unaware and ignorant of forms, because their cognition is purely the act of bodily organs and nothing else. When the body dies, the form dies. Animalistic cognition knows only materials particulars, of which it forms phantasms (mental images) by collecting sensible species (sense data) through its sensory organs. This is a thoroughly physical process.

The "middle" place to which Aquinas then assigns human cognition is between angelic and animalistic. The human intellect is incorruptible: Platonic, it can exist by itself without a material body. Intellectual activity is not a function of bodily organs. The cognitive power of the soul is, or relates to, the form of the body. The human intellect understands the material world through phantasms; it deduces forms via the material world. Aquinas usually designates as 'intelligible species' those forms which the mind deduces. ('Forms' and 'intelligible species' might be very nearly synonymous in Thomist vocabulary.)

We have seen how Aquinas locates human intellect in a "middle" position between angelic and animalistic cognition. He faces the challenge of showing that he can harmonize his system with both Augustine and Aristotle. The process of divine illumination is central; Augustine locates forms in God, or more precisely in the divine intellect. Augustine says that we know material objects through God's ideas. According to Augustine, God illuminates our minds with forms. By contrast, Aquinas has indicated that the human intellect deduces forms from phantasms informed by sensible species. How then can Aquinas claim to be in harmony with Augustine? Aquinas will claim that his system shows humans to be indirectly illuminated by God. Augustine seems to indicate a more direct illumination, but if Aquinas can explain some manner of indirect illumination, he can then say that he agrees with Augustine that the human intellect receives divine illumination, and downplay the distinction between his indirect illumination and Augustine's direct illumination. In any case, it will be imperative for Aquinas to avoid giving the impression that the human intellect is self-illuminating.

Turning to the issue of the human will, Aquinas is concerned to show that he is in harmony with Aristotle. Aristotle posited the will as a rational appetite which is necessarily directed toward happiness. Aquinas agrees, and one question about the human will is about the nature of the necessity which directs it toward happiness. Such a necessity could be at odds with some notions of freedom. By contrast, Aquinas and Aristotle define 'passion' as a sensory appetite. Aquinas, who is concerned to weld Aristotelian psychology to Christian ethics, posits a second function of the will: free choice. This activity of free choice is not necessary, and therefore contingent, and is directed toward practical goods. Practical goods are, or are thought to be, means to an end, where the end is happiness. This allows for the human will to be at times misguided, when we freely chose a means, but do not know that these means will fail to achieve the desired end.

The will as rational appetite, which is determined by its object, inasmuch as happiness is necessarily the goal of the will is contrasted with the will as free choice, which is not determined by its object. Even in the former case, Aquinas sees the necessity as uncoerced: happiness necessarily attracts the will, but the will is not forced toward it.

Aquinas raises some murky issues around the question of whether the notion of Providence conflicts with free will. First arises the older question, going back at least to Augustine if not earlier, about the compatibility of our free action with God's foreknowledge. How can God foreknow our free actions prior to creating anything, specifically, prior to creating our wills which will make choices freely? To the extent that God's foreknowledge is based upon His knowledge of our will, it would seem that He designed our wills, and so His foreknowledge comes into tension with the freedom of those wills.

Sartre on Heidegger

Jean-Paul Sartre's voluminous correspondence with his friend Simone de Beauvoir offers us a glimpse both into his intellectual life and into his personal life. Although we do not gain a detailed understanding of his reading of Heidegger in these letters, we do see how central Heidegger was to Sartre's development.

In July of 1939, he wrote to her that he was happy that

you've finally read Heidegger, it's worth your while and we'll talk about it.

Later the same year, he records his impressions of Paris in its last pre-war late summer. Even Sartre's mundane ruminations on travel are affected by his reading of Heidegger:

Paris was very strange. Everything was closed, restaurants, theaters, stores, because it's August, and the neighborhoods had lost their individual character. There was only one totality left, Paris itself. A totality which, for me, was already a thing of the past and, as Heidegger says, retained and upheld by nothingness.

His reference to Paris as 'a thing of the past' may be because he's getting ready to leave, or because his sense that soon war will change it. In either case, once he has left (to resume his military service), he writes to Simone de Beauvoir about his fellow officers, even describing one's personality in Heideggerian categories, in a letter dated 6 September 1939. A few weeks later, he explains how he departs from Heidegger in his own thinking:

All of man's acts, being accomplished by means of the body, are registered finitely on a double infinity - of immensity and minuteness. And from that fact, all consideration of objects as implements brings human reality to the consciousness of its own disregard. For what Heidegger did not see is that the infiniteness of the world surpasses its implementicity in every direction.

He continues:

If the vast distances to the stars produce a stupor akin to Pascal's terror, that is because it comes from the transcendent infinite of the transcendental consciousness - and, at the same time, the perception of the stars necessarily includes an attempt at their implementation which conflicts with their “out-of-reach” quality. Heidegger didn't see that his world for man - which is indeed immediately and pre-ontologically an implement - is coincidental with man and not wtih the transcendental consciousness, and that it is completely surpassed and disarmed by the world for consciousness, which isn't capable of receiving implementicity, across which implementicity slips without being able to grab hold.

In October of 1939, he writes that

I'm mulling over a central idea that will finally allow me to eliminate the unconscious, to reconcile Heidegger and Husserl.

Later, he reports that

I attempted a reconciliation of Heidegger and Husserl. It didn't pan out, but I stuck to it doggedly, and I feel quite woozy after six hours' effort. The whole thing must be done over. There is still this entirely circular idea and I don't know where to pick it up, so I grab at it, and it slips through my fingers like a ball of grease. You'll see, it makes for odd little notebooks.

In November, he complains in a letter that one of his fellow officers didn't understand a Heidegger book which Sartre had lent to him; presumably most of Sartre's fellow officers would have been in that situation, although Sartre seems to think that after weeks of trying, they've begun to understand a bit of Heidegger. These were the long weeks after war had been declared in the autumn of 1939, but before actual fighting began in early 1940. Such officers had lots of time for conversation, but with an ominous or foreboding sense about the future. Sartre notes that

Human reality is of a particular existential type, as constituted by its existence in the form of value to be realized through its freedom. This is what Heidegger expresses when he says that man is a being of distances.

Even as Heidegger's influence on Sartre makes itself ever more felt, Sartre discovers Kierkegaard's influence on Heidegger. He writes in another letter to Simone de Beauvoir about Kierkegaard's book

The Concept of Dread, in which there are countless things within theologic terms that are obviously a bit forbidding. His influence on Heidegger is undeniable.

In another letter, dated December 1939, Sartre continues, telling her that he's continuing to study

The Concept of Dread, which I'll send or bring back to you, and which you'll read with the greatest of interest, if only to understand Kierkegaard's influence on Heidegger and on Kafka (you know that Kafka feathered his nest through that book).

It becomes clear, through these letters, that 1939 was a pivotal year for Sartre's intellectual development, and that Heidegger influenced him greatly during this time.