A Philosophical Classic: Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Truth Claims

Throughout the history of philosophy, certain themes recur regularly. Various philosophers in various eras return again and again to perennial topics.

The relationship between certain types of psychological determinism and ethical responsibility is one example. A typical formulation goes something like this: if an individual is determined, logically and temporally prior to his acting, in a way beyond his control or awareness, then when he acts, he cannot be morally responsible for his action.

This formulation is, of course, one of many, and is often used in introductory philosophy classes to begin a discussion.

A second textbook example looks at the relationship between determinism and truth claims. If an individual is in certain ways determined, what does it mean for that individual to utter, or write, a truth claim? Does his lack of freedom in making assertions affect his belief in his own truth claim? Should it affect our evaluation of his truth claim? Was he able to examine the proposition, and alternative propositions, before expressing it?

A third exemplar is a mixture of the first two. What is the relationship between the ability to be morally responsible and the ability to make truth claims? If both are called into question by determinism, then what is the common element in both?

Such classic investigations can be found in Greek antiquity, in contemporary philosophy, and at many points in between.

Overeager Claims about Self-Replication: Thinly Disguised Speculations about the Origins of Life

A perennial question in the philosophy of science addresses the origin of life. The natural sciences themselves investigate this question, but the philosophy of science ponders both the methods of such investigations and any results.

One aspect of this question is exploring the possibility of self-replicating molecules. Is it possible that there could be a chemical compound which somehow reproduces itself?

This history of science admits of a number of “holy grail” quests, some of which have plausible claims to success, like the search for metallic hydrogen, and others of which have failed spectacularly, like attempts to isolate samples of phlogiston or aether. Other “holy grail” quests include the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) or the possibility of life outside of planet Earth.

Historically, such quests often trigger hasty claims, which must then be retracted. Such is the case with self-replicating molecules.

With barely-suppressed fanfare, an article titled “Oligoarginine peptides slow strand annealing and assist non-enzymatic RNA replication” appeared in June 2016. The authors wrote of “self-folding” molecules and the “self-assembly” of compounds.

The core motive of such research is the unstated subtext that self-reproducing non-living chemical structures could eventually lead to life.

Living structures reproduce themselves routinely. Non-living structures have never, so far, been observed to reproduce themselves.

The question for the philosophy of science is whether it is possible, even in principle, for a molecule to self-replicate.

The empirical question searches for instances of self-replication. The a priori question asks if such a thing is at all possible.

In any case, the particular publication mentioned above was retracted in October 2017. The article and its retraction both appear in the journal Nature Chemistry, edited by Stuart Cantrill. It was not the first, and will not be the last, overeager announcement of progress toward the discovery of a self-reproducing compound.

More promising than the observational task is the theoretical question. Without examining any particular chemical structure, the philosophy of science can ask what would be required to demonstrate the plausibility of the idea of a self-replicating molecule in general. Which general principles of covalent bonding, of ionic bonding, or of chemical reactions, etc., would indicate that it is at all possible, in principle, for there to be a self-replicating molecule?

It would be a mistake to confidently predict any outcome to this search - such predictions lead to retractions like the one mentioned above, made by Tony Jia, Albert Fahrenbach, Neha Kamat, Katarzyna Adamala, and Jack Szostak.

The fewer triumphalist claims on behalf of self-replicating compounds, the better.

Always and Again: The Centrality of Definition in the Process of Doing Philosophy

A student in the first semester and a professor with decades of professional activity are both obliged to wrestle with the process of definition, and to return again to sharpen or revise definitions.

One notorious word is ‘religion,’ which seems to frustrate more attempts to define it than many other words. Often definitions are implicit, and sometimes the used with only partial awareness. Consider this example from Richard Lenski:

While I am not a historian or a theologian, I think the case can be made that many religions have historically (and probably prehistorically) been conflicted between two distinct functions. On the one hand, religions have often sought to provide explanations about the natural world — how it came into being, and especially our own place in the world. The stories from Genesis of the creation in six days, and of the tower of Babel leading to different languages, are two familiar examples. On the other hand, religions have also sought to direct actions by explaining which behaviors were morally acceptable and which were not, and often prescribing rewards and punishments (in this life or beyond) to encourage moral behavior. The ten commandments and the parables of Jesus are examples in which religion gives moral direction. Thus, many religions, in an intellectual sense, have served two masters — understanding our place in nature and giving moral guidance.

Lurking behind Lenski’s “two functions” are two definitions, or two parts of one definition, for the word ‘religion.’

The first may be called a ‘mythological’ definition, inasmuch as a myth is often defined as a narrative which explains. As an aside, ‘myth’ is not synonymous with ‘falsehood,’ because there are some true myths, i.e., true narrative which explain. Lenski is attributing a mythological function to religion.

Second, Lenski attributes a moral function to religion, a legislative function.

While religion certainly often connects to mythology and to morality, neither is central or essential to religion. One can have mythology and morality without religion, and one can have religion without mythology or morality.

More central and more essential to a definition of religion would be the feature of relationship, i.e., a relationship between one or more human beings and one or more deities. This feature is necessary and essential to religion.

In sum, when trying to refine a definition of ‘religion,’ mythology and morality are red herrings.

Faraday’s Electromagnetism: Discoveries Founded upon a Worldview

The list of inventions, discoveries, and technologies which are possible only because of Michael Faraday’s work is a very long list indeed. Telephones, smartphones, radios, computers, televisions, microwave ovens, and radar would be a mere start to that list.

Of Scottish heritage and born in England in 1791, Faraday explored a relatively new branch of science: electromagnetism. Apparently, his interest in this topic began while working in chemistry.

His explorations in both chemistry and physics were informed by a worldview that saw the universe as structured around rational principles like algebra and geometry. Part of Faraday’s genius was to explore essentially mathematical topics intuitively and by means of images, often using few or even no equations or formulas.

Pearce Williams, Chairman of Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies, describes Faraday’s work, which has become an indispensable foundation for much of modern science:

Faraday, who became one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century, began his career as a chemist. He wrote a manual of practical chemistry that reveals his mastery of the technical aspects of his art, discovered a number of new organic compounds, among them benzene, and was the first to liquefy a “permanent” gas (i.e., one that was believed to be incapable of liquefaction). His major contribution, however, was in the field of electricity and magnetism. He was the first to produce an electric current from a magnetic field, invented the first electric motor and dynamo, demonstrated the relation between electricity and chemical bonding, discovered the effect of magnetism on light, and discovered and named diamagnetism, the peculiar behaviour of certain substances in strong magnetic fields. He provided the experimental, and a good deal of the theoretical, foundation upon which James Clerk Maxwell erected classical electromagnetic field theory.

European culture, and Western Civilization generally, served as an incubator for modern chemistry and physics by promulgating a worldview which included the notion that the physical universe is structured around algebra and geometry. Already present in medieval scholasticism, and made more explicit in Newtonian thought, this worldview saw lawlike regularity as evidence of underlying mathematical principles in the observable world.

The fact that an equation like F = ma is applicable and verifiable not merely here and there, but everywhere, motivated the thought that there is a universal structure to matter.

Alan Hirshfeld is Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts and a noted astronomer. He writes:

From the start, Faraday’s investigations were more than a joyous commune with nature; they were a sincere attempt to discern God’s invisible qualities through the very design of the world. Through well-constructed observations and experiments, he sought to distill nature’s seemingly diverse phenomena to a common, irreducible basis - and in this fundamental unity of the universe, he would witness the divine signature. The intense spirituality that imbued Faraday’s science derived from his upbringing in the Sandemanian faith, a tightly knit Protestant sect founded in the mid-1700s by Scottish minister John Glas and his son-in-law Robert Sandeman.

As already noted, medieval thinkers paved the way for modern physics and chemistry by hypothesizing that there was a uniformity throughout the empirical world. Whether on the Earth, on the Moon, or on Jupiter, there were certain essential feature to matter and to energy. These features are immutable and can often be expressed mathematically.

This view of the physical universe is a distinctive feature of Western Civilization and of the culture into which Faraday was born.

Faraday, and modern observational science, inherited a second notion from the Middle Ages. From the Augustinian tradition come the notion of experimental error. Francis Bacon systematically catalogue sources of experimental error and create a taxonomy of them.

Experimental error is the scientist’s version of humility: acknowledging the possibility of mistakes.

The synonymous words ‘Sandemanian’ and ‘Glasite’ (or ‘Glassite’) are used to describe Faraday's views.

For Faraday, the concept of experimental error was already contained in a spiritual view of human nature, as Alan Hirshfeld writes:

Inspired by a literalist reading of the New Testament, Sandemanians eschewed pride and wealth in favor of piety, humility, and community with fellow Sandemanians. Much of Faraday’s over serenity owed itself to the affirmative aspects of his religion. “He drinks from a fount on Sunday which refreshes his soul for a week,” noted friend and biographer John Tyndall. Faraday, the Sandemanian, took human fallibility as a given, so he never staked his ego on the correctness or acceptance of his own ideas. He was a scientific pilgrim, inching his way toward the heart of a complex universe. Whether his chosen path proved mistaken was of little consequence; there was always another path. The joy was in the journey.

Whether implicit or explicit, the desire for a sort of ‘Grand Unified Theory’ is present in the work of many different scientists. They hunt for a single systemic explanation behind a manifold phenomena.

Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, writes about Faraday’s search for unity behind the range of contrasting empirical data:

One example of the influence of his theological perspective on his science is Faraday’s preoccupation with nature’s laws. ‘God has been pleased to work in his material creation by laws,’ he remarked, and ‘the Creator governs his material works by definite laws resulting from the forces impressed on matter.’ This is part of the designer’s art: ‘How wonderful is to me the simplicity of nature when we rightly interpret her laws.’ But, as Cantor points out, ‘the consistency and simplicity of nature were not only conclusions that Faraday drew from his scientific work but they were also metaphysical presuppositions that directed his research.’ He sought the unifying laws relating the forces of the world, and was highly successful in respect of electricity, magnetism, and light. His program was less successful in attempting to unify gravity and electricity, for which failure he may readily be forgiven, since 150 years later we still don’t know how to do that!

The nearly universal quest, among scientists operating within the framework of Western Civilization or European culture, for unifying principles is a quest fueled by an understanding of the physical world as structured by, and built upon, rational and mathematical principles.

Faraday’s work is a prime example, but also only one of many examples, of scientific work powered by a particular worldview. Some version of medieval Scholasticism, with its Augustinian realism about human error and its Thomistic optimism about the power of human reason, is the energizing force not only behind Faraday’s brilliant work, but also behind much of modern physics and chemistry.

Kierkegaard’s Odd Attack Begins: Monday, December 18, 1854

The latter part of Soren Kierkegaard’s career was devoted to explaining that the two words ‘Christianity’ and ‘Christendom’ were opposites. This explanation was startling because many of his readers had taken the two as nearly synonymous.

Kierkegaard had a thorough education in philosophy, and, as Wayne Kraus writes,

His life’s mission was the rediscovery of New Testament Christianity, which he insisted had been abolished by “Christendom.”

The same point can be made with different terminology. It is the distinction between human religious institutions and traditions on the one hand, and on the other hand an encounter with, and a devotion to, God. It is the distinction, and in some cases the opposition, between religion and God.

In everyday speech, twenty-first century speakers of American English blur the line. The statement, “I’m not religious,” is not an answer to the question, “Do you believe in God?”

It is in fact, the most sincere belief in God which often launches the harshest attacks on religion. Humans construct religion: practices, holidays, ceremonies, rites, rituals, etc.

Humans often construct religions with the noblest of motives, hoping that these religions will in some way connect people to God. Religions often do exactly that: offer enlightenment, education, care for the poor, work for peace and justice, etc.

But religions can break bad.

Kierkegaard encountered a church which claimed to be faithful to the New Testament, and which claimed to be following Jesus. What Kierkegaard experienced, however, was a significant number of clergy who used the church as a way to ensure material comfort in their own lives, and as a way to garner admiration from society at large.

Instead of serving their fellow human and serving Jesus, some of the Danish clergy in Kierkegaard’s day were serving themselves.

He saw a segment of the institutional church pursuing worldly prosperity, and he saw this as a clear contradiction to the text of the New Testament and as a clear contradiction to the factual documented words and actions of Jesus.

Kierkegaard’s incisive analysis of the Danish church was both logical and passionate. His critique both reflected and provoked a crisis, as coauthors Guram Tewsadse and Hans-Martin Gerlach note:

Kierkegaard [ist ein] dänischer Theologe und Philosoph, dessen Denken als ein erster theologischer Ausdruck der Krise der bürgerlichen philosophischen und religiösen Weltanschauung in der Mitte des 19. Jh. gewertet werden muß.

Tewsadse and Gerlach articulate a particular interpretation of Kierkegaard, which emerges from a broader interpretation of the history of philosophy: Kierkegaard is part of a cosmic unfolding of history, in this case, the history of philosophy. This grand unfolding follows a definite direction through a series of discernable stages.

One competing interpretation of Kierkegaard might see him as engaging in eternal questions which, rephrased for context, could have just as easily been asked a few centuries earlier or later; and perhaps they were.

Another competing view of Kierkegaard might see him as responding neither to universal questions, nor to his specific era in the unfolding of some material dialectic. Rather, this view might see him as responding primarily to his own inner world: his emotions and experience.

Whichever view one might take of Kierkegaard, Tewsadse and Gerlach point out the directness and frankness of the writings he produced during the final phase of his career:

[Kierkegaard gründete] eine von ihm herausgegebene und geschriebene Zeitschrift, die K.s Kampfansage gegen die offizielle dänische Kirche und ihre Verbundenheit mit dem Staat artikulierten.

This critique of the Danish church had long simmered in Kierkegaard’s mind, but it was finally occasioned by two events. First, the death of Bishop Mynster, who had been a friend of Kierkegaard’s father, and for whose sake Kierkegaard had kept silent; with Mynster gone, Kierkegaard could write freely.

The second, and more specific, event which occasioned the beginning of Kierkegaard’s attack was a funeral sermon given by a Professor Martensen at Mynster’s funeral. Martensen, in eulogizing Mynster, had called the deceased bishop “a witness to the truth.”

While that phrase might strike many hearers, or readers, as generally complimentary, if somewhat bland, tribute, to Kierkegaard’s ears, it was blasphemy. As a scholar who’d studied ancient Greek, Kierkegaard knew that the phrase meant one who’d made the ultimate sacrifice. The Greek word for ‘witness’ is the English word ‘martyr.’

Kierkegaard knew that, textually, the martyrs were the people who, starting with Stephen and the others killed under the supervision of Saul, had been tortured and murdered simply because they followed Jesus. Under the Roman Empire’s government, during the first three centuries after the start of the Jesus movement, thousands of people were martyred.

By contrast, Bishop Mynster had lived a materially comfortable life, enjoying social admiration, to an old age. In Kierkegaard’s mind, he was in no way a martyr, and to call him ‘witness to the truth’ was an insult to the thousands of martyrs who had died humiliating deaths.

Mynster’s death removed any hesitations Kierkegaard had about publishing his critique of the Danish church, and Martensen’s funeral sermon precipitated the actual writing and publication. Mynster died in January 1854, and Kierkegaard published the first installment of his attack in December of that year.

The Meta-History of Philosophy

If we examine the history of Peloponnesian War, or of the Spanish Civil War - if we examine the history of jury trials, or of metalworking - then whichever methods we use for those types of history will also be applied to the history of Schopenhauer, or of Kierkegaard - i.e., to the history of philosophy.

To speak of the history of philosophy is to speak of history; the history of philosophy is history, and so is subject to any generalizations which can be made about history.

Whichever descriptive or prescriptive rules apply to history in general apply also to the history of philosophy.

There is even the risk of an infinite regression: if we apply the philosophy of history to the history of philosophy, then we would have the philosophy of the history of philosophy - and we do in fact have this.

(And then: the history of the philosophy of history, the history of the philosophy of the history of philosophy, the philosophy of the history of the philosophy of history, etc.)

The term ‘meta-history’ can be used in several senses: it can refer to the archetypical patterns which either govern or describe historical events and processes; it can refer to the manner in which historical narratives are created; it can refer to the study of the philosophy of history (cf. the Oxford English Dictionary).

There is also the question of defining ‘history’ - the word can refer to the actual events and processes which have occurred in the past, or it can refer to our writings and narratives which attempt to record those events and processes, as Frederick Copleston writes:

Taken by itself, in abstraction from context, the term ‘history of philosophy’ is ambiguous. On the one hand it may refer to the actual historical development of philosophical thought, in the Greco-Roman world, for example, or in India. On the other hand it can be used, and, I suppose, generally is used, to refer to written accounts of such developments. Thus one might say of a book, ‘this is an account of the history of Greek philosophy.’ This possible ambiguity might be avoided by reserving the term ‘history of philosophy’ for the actual historical development of philosophical thought and by employing some such phrase as ‘historiography of philosophy’ to refer to written accounts of this development. But this cumbersome procedure is unnecessary. These sense in which ‘history of philosophy’ is being used is generally clear enough from context.

Copleston’s view includes some amount of Platonism or realism - he calls it ‘a common-sense point of view.’ This leads us to Kantian considerations about history.

Kantianly, there’s a Ding-an-sich (a ‘thing in itself’) behind or under our perception of the thing: a noumenon behind the phenomenon. Analogously, we might ask about an event in itself apart from the event as we perceive it.

On the other hand, an opposing view might argue that there is no history apart from the perceptions we have and the narratives we create: that history is the telling of history, and nothing more. Philosophers use the word ‘idealism’ to refer to such a view, and the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753) expressed such views.

If Copleston draws our attention the questions about realism or idealism in history in general, and in the history of philosophy in particular, then John Yolton draws our attention to the linguistic considerations:

Taking its root in the theory of types, the theory of meta-disciplines insists that any given discipline, such as sociology, psychology, language, etc., must be distinguished from the talk about that discipline. The psychologist in his laboratory, performing experiments, deriving conclusions, devising theories, is engaged in the accepted activities of his profession. When that same psychologist begins to reflect critically upon his methodologies, upon the meanings of the familiar terms, upon the general significance of his science, he has taken on the activities traditionally associated with the philosopher, he has, that is, become a meta-psychologist. Philosophies of science are, in this way, meta-scientific activities, since the men who construct them do not perform the scientific experiments but instead examine the presuppositions, the methodologies, the concepts of the sciences. Since the two-fold distinction of discipline and meta-discipline arose out of the theory of types, and since this theory has had its most wide-spread application within semantic systems, much of the activity of meta-disciplines has taken the form of a linguistic analysis of the speech and writing of any given discipline.

There is, perhaps, a general pattern in which questions which were viewed as metaphysical questions in the 18th and 19th centuries came to be viewed as linguistic questions in the 20th century.

If the 20th century was the heyday of the philosophy of language, then it should be no surprise that meta-historical thought was treated as a question about the language used to talk about history. Meta-history was seen as the examination of the language which historians used to talk about evidence and data - the language which was used to construct narratives.

Yolton continues:

Thus, Hare has recently given us an analysis of The Language of Morals, Woodger presents Biology and Language, and Ryle offers an account of mental conduct words. Such analyses of the language of disciplines cannot avoid making assertions or drawing conclusions about the activity of the discipline itself: that is precisely the function of a critical examination of science, ethics, or history, i.e., to formulate conclusions not only of a descriptive but also of a prescriptive nature. Ryle urges us, for example, to dispense with the fallacy of the ghost in the machine in thinking about the nature of mind and mental activity, while the historical relativist insists that claims to objectivity in historiography are fallacious. If taken seriously, the analysis of the meta-discipline reflects back upon the discipline itself, recommendations made upon the meta-level are absorbed 'into the original activity. The meta-discipline lays bare latent presuppositions, exposes them to criticism, challenges their accepted meanings, indicates contractions required for precision.

We might pose a question about whether, in the history of philosophy, it is correct to speak of Bossuet ‘reacting’ or ‘responding’ to Hobbes. One the one hand, to thus speak creates a more intelligible and continuous narrative. On the other hand, it might be more accurate to simply say that Bossuet wrote at a point in time after Hobbes had published his major texts. To attribute ‘reacting’ or ‘responding’ to Bossuet might exceed the evidence at hand.

Likewise, to ask whether George Berkeley is properly grouped among the British empiricists, as Louis Loeb does, is simultaneously to challenge a construct created by some historians of philosophy and to create a new competing construct. Both the asking of the question and the answering of it are worth investigating, inasmuch as the examination of schools of philosophy is the examination of a later historiographical construct, a construct which is then retrojected onto the earlier evidence, rather than a direct examination of the data itself.

In any case, while it is first necessary for us to naively ask a historian of philosophy for a narrative about “what happened,” it is secondly also necessary for us to ask the historian of philosophy about how he constructs narratives and how he chooses from among competing narratives.

Competing Views of Descartes: How Platonic Are His ‘Immutable Natures’ and ‘Eternal Truths’?

Almost single-handedly, Rene Descartes began modern philosophy. What scholars call ‘modern’ philosophy started around 1620. It is indicative of the character of this movement that Descartes was, among other things, a mathematician.

In addition to founding modern philosophy, Descartes initiated one of the competing schools within it. The cartesian school is known as ‘rationalist’ and has a preference for a priori knowledge over a posteriori knowledge, i.e., it privileges knowledge which is not empirical over knowledge gained from sense-data, and privileges theoretical deduction over knowledge gained through the use of the five sense.

Descartes hoped to build a reliable foundation for knowledge on those three things which he thought to be most certain: the truths of geometry and algebra, the confidence that any rational agent has about her or his own existence, and existence of a non-contingent being on whom other contingencies rest.

Given the centrality of arithmetic and mathematical truths in cartesian thought, it became obvious for students to ask about the nature of such truths. In this question, modern philosophy inherited some questions which had been discussed in both medieval and ancient philosophy. This topic is often labelled as the “problem of universals.”

This debate, according to Tad Schmaltz, “concerns the ontological status of universal features of reality.” For example, the system of Euclidean geometry yields certain results - and those results hold equally in Europe and North America, equally last year and next year. They are universal.

An interpretive question asks how, exactly, Descartes regarded what he viewed as, in Schmaltz’s words, “eternal truths.”

The ancient antecedents of this debate see one side in Plato, who considered such eternal truths to be not physical but rather metaphysical objects and considered them to exist both outside the physical natural world and outside the human mind. They see the other side in Aristotle, who located these truths in the natural physical world.

The medievals were bequeathed this dispute, and refined the argumentation on both sides with increased nuance.

Plato should not, however, be seen as an early version of Descartes; nor should Aristotle be seen as an early version of John Locke.

While Plato and Descartes may have shared a fondness for a realism about abstractions, they were quite different in other ways.

The interpretive questions for those who study Descartes include these: what did he consider to be in the category of metaphysical objects? What, according to him, are those things which we can consider to be outside the realm of physical objects? Which realities are not detectable by the five senses?

Two competing views of him emerge: one view sees him as minimally metaphysical and as assigning relatively few objects to the category of metaphysical object; the other view sees him as richly metaphysical, populating the metaphysical realm with many objects and with many different types of object.

Tad Schmaltz describes the interpretive schism:

The division in the recent literature on Descartes is between those who see him as adopting the broadly Platonic view that immutable natures are independent both of the human mind and of the particular objects in the created world that exemplify those natures, on the one hand, and those who see him as endorsing a conceptualist reduction of such natures to features of the human mind, on the other.

A closely related question is this: is our idea of a truth identical with the truth itself?

As Schmaltz writes, there is textual evidence on both sides of these questions. Descartes’s writings are ambiguous.

There is a related controversy regarding the ontological implications of Descartes’s famous (some would say infamous) doctrine of God’s free creation of eternal truths. Though there is some support in Descartes’s texts for the identification of these truths with the ideas concerning them that God has imprinted in our mind, there also is reason to worry that such an identification cannot fully accommodate everything that Descartes has to say concerning eternal truths and immutable natures.

So, on the one hand, there is a debate about whether or not eternal truths are identified with our ideas concerning them. On the other hand there is a debate about whether immutable natures are features of the human mind or whether immutable natures are independent both of the mind and of the physical world.

These two debates are intricately linked, to the point that the question could be posed as to whether they perhaps constitute only one debate, cast in two different sets of vocabulary.

Are the words ‘eternal truths are identified with our ideas concerning them’ equivalent to the words ‘immutable natures are features of the human mind’? Again, are the words ‘immutable natures are independent both of the human mind and of particular objects in the created world’ equivalent to the words ‘eternal truths are not to be identified with our ideas concerning them’?