Sellars and Kant on Intuition (III)

I have been going through the first chapter of Wilfrid Sellars' Science and Metaphysics recently with the last posting  on this topic discussing the second movement of the chapter and revealing how, in it, Sellars substantiated his conception of "sheer receptivity" and connected it to a revised account of "sense impressions". In this posting I will look at the third movement of the first chapter.


The third movement opens with what Sellars hopes is a relatively uncontentious claim to the effect that visual perception involves, in some sense, conceptual representations. If we do assume this to be so then it will follow that verbal reports made concerning what it is we are seeing will express a "conceptual episode" that contains the twin elements of perceptual capacity and a reference to how the general environment is causally affecting one. This point is then used to begin to explore the relationship between ordinary speech that refers to sense impressions and the philosophical analyses that have been undertaken of such. The contrast drawn is that, generally, people seem to have no compunction in referring to a general impression of a red book on a brown table but philosophical analysis of impressions rarely allows for the sense that what that phrase might report is a distinct sensory impression. The reason why philosophers appear to have been reluctant to analyse what is given in ordinary speech in a way that reflects the structure of that speech appears to have been that philosophical analysis of such impressions produces a thinner sense of what is given than ordinary speech appears to report.


However, there is a point at which philosophical analysis and ordinary speech get closer together and this is when ordinary speech reflects a problem in the speaker's response to the datum given. So, speakers become, for example, confused about what is given to them and then their speech reports become correspondingly thinner (and more like philosophical analysis). Sellars illustrates this with a progressive distinction between speakers concerning whether the datum they have given to them is "a red book over there" as opposed to "a rectangular physical object" or even it merely "looking like" there is a red book over there. The second claim would be a kind of minimal objective claim (much like philosophical analysis tends to give) whilst the last moves from a vocabulary that endorses something as given to one which places it in a merely "seeming" location. We can imagine the second claim relativised by also being put in a "seeming" manner.


If the second claim was so relativised then we have a kind of reflection on the statement in question. Now, in general situations the reason why this kind of reflection often appears required is, as first suggested, because of a kind of puzzlement about the datum given. It doesn't seem necessary to reflect otherwise. However, philosophical analysis has often operated as if the experience of the sense impression was typically like the one that ordinary speech only reflects in these cases of puzzlement. By contrast, what Sellars seems to aim at now is a distinction between the presence of minimal sense impressions and the necessity of minimal conceptual episodes like those given when we place the impression under the cover of a "seeming" notion.


However, rather than immediately directly arguing against the assumption that says  a kind of minimal conceptual episode is required if there exist minimal sense impressions, Sellars first looks at what would have to be given in the minimal conceptual episode, if it existed. There would have to be, Sellars suggests, three distinct aspects of the visual perception. These would be: a) a purely physical aspect, however described; b) a primary mental aspect sufficient to produce the minimal conceptual episode; c) a "rich" conceptual episode that allows for reference to such things as "cabbages and kings and pigs in barnyards".


Sellars does not next instantly reject the division of the experience into the three elements in question. Nor does he reject the distinction between the "receptivity" of the sense and the "guidedness" of the sense by conceptual representation. The second is, in fact, taken to be required by Kantian analysis. For example, Kant refers to productive imagination "taking up" (A120) the manifold which implies, to Sellars, that the manifold is something independent. (See also, which Sellars does not cite, B145.) 


However, whilst the latter point seems required for the Kantian analysis to work, this manifold should not be construed as belonging itself to the conceptual order but to be something non-conceptual. It is only if it is understood, in accord with the general pattern of Sellars' analysis, as so non-conceptual, that we have a notion that there is something "outside" the conceptual order, something that he takes to be a sense of "intuition", the sense at work in the uniqueness of perceptual judgment where the latter refers to some notion that there is something given, a particular this as such. This continued insistence on the understanding of intuition in this way is part of what makes Sellars' analysis so constantly reminiscent of that of Maimon whilst also distinguishing it from Maimon since the latter takes the consequence of this point to be that space and time are not really intuitions at all.


The general point that Sellars closes the third movement with is that the heterogeneity of the receptivity of sense (in the radical way required by the notion of "sheer receptivity") is what would be needed for Kant to escape the dialectic of German idealism that leads to Hegel. Without this heterogeneity we are well on the way to such idealism and the movement towards it seems, indeed, part of the effect of Maimon's analysis.

Interrupting Derrida

I've been reading a posthumous publication of an interview with Jacques Derrida entitled Copy, Archive, Signature. Its purported "subject" is photography with the subtitle telling us that what we have here is a "conversation" on the topic. Derrida gave a lot of interviews to a lot of people on very varied occasions with rather mixed results. This one dates from 1992 and has previously appeared in German in an abridged form but has not yet appeared in French. The question of the linguistic status of the text and, indeed, of texts generally is raised in a lengthy introduction by Gerhard Richter.


However, what struck me about this text were things different to what occurred to Richter. The interview has been transcribed from a tape recording and at one point it is marked in the transcription that there "appears" to be an interruption. We come back in with some odd remarks from Derrida about rain but following these there comes a question about the "role of the gaze in the photographic portrait". To this Derrida answers with a discussion of the peculiarity of gazing. When we gaze we do not see our own gazing. This ordinary fact is, naturally, somewhat peculiar since there is something essential about ourselves that is hidden from us. The camera, if it catches our gaze, shows us something in the photograph that we never otherwise catch a glimpse of. 


Earlier in the interview Derrida had spoken about the peculiar status of giving photographs of oneself to another. Early in the 20th century "thinkers" such as Heidegger would give signed photographs of themselves to others, something that no one in such a status does now. For historical reasons that are both obvious and yet also elusive only those identified as "celebrities" now give such gifts to others. 


What is given when the photograph of oneself is given to someone else? Rather than directly answer this Derrida discusses the way in which to give such a gift one both engages in narcissism and yet also, in another way, 'interrupts' it. The engagement in narcissism occurs due to the presentation of the image of oneself to the other, a presentation that seems to say to the other, "here I am". This saying, from me to you, thus signals my importance for and to you. By contrast, however, the "interruption" occurs due to the fact that what I give in giving this image is an indication of something that is lost to me, my own gaze. This giving of what is lost to me hence, in its way, robs my narcissism of its focus, removes my self from me. This leads finally to a couple of sentences that, in my view, are some of Derrida's most beautiful:

This is like the erotics of the gaze, the exchange of gazes, gazes that cross, and that cross at the point where each one cannot reappropriate itself, and therefore already gives itself, delivers itself and gives itself up, unarmed: this is a gesture that can in certain situations be more exposed, more giving and more intense than 'making love'. In it the gaze is naked, at once naked and not seeing itself. Exposed as overexposed, like nudity.

The giving of the image of my gaze provokes, in its turn, your gaze upon my gaze, a gaze here that I do not receive and that you find does not return to you since it is as lost to you as my gaze is to me. This "exchange" follows the gift but it is not an exchange in the sense that anything returns to either of us. It is a situation of absolute loss and this loss is what disarms us. The gaze as the surrendering of one to the other, the most basic form of nudity. This reflection clearly echoes something in Levinas but, even as it does so, takes away from Levinas something. That economy would itself merit further reflection, on another occasion.

W.D. Ross, Common Sense Morality, and Self-Evidence

In The Right and the Good there are a number of references to "what is commonly thought" or held to be the case in terms of morality. Ross also refers at certain points to what the "plain man" thinks. These references are part of a rudimentary notion of "common sense morality" in Ross, a notion inherited from intuitionists of an earlier time (and perhaps a notion systematised first by Henry Sidgwick). However, when he turns to assessing the grounds for taking the claims of such morality seriously then Ross makes an appeal that turns on the "self-evidence" of such "common sense" morals.


The appeal in question is explained by reference to how it is that certain types of claim fail to get dislodged by moral theories. This argument is specifically aimed against consequentialism but would effect other theories that, like the consequentialist one, are revisionist of settled moral convictions. The example given is that of making a promise. When a promise is made we assume that it has binding force independently of any notion of optimific outcomes. When we "reflect" on the notion of a promise we do not find any reference in our understanding of its obligatoriness to considerations of the type that would be expected if it were grounded ultimately on consequentialist considerations. This does not entail that we have to reject any appeal to consequence sensitivity but it does show that even if we decide not to follow the prima facie duty of promise keeping that this does not, in itself, indicate that the ground of the duty is in fact a consequentialist one.


Ross also summarises his understanding of the self-evidence that applies with ethics in terms of a remarkable statement that relates ethical statements to a type of accumulative sedimentation when he writes:

We have no more direct way of access to the facts about rightness and goodness and about what things are right or good, than by thinking about them; the moral convictions of thoughtful and well-education people are the data of ethics just as sense-perception are the data of natural science. Just as some of the latter have to be rejected as illusory, so have some of the former; but as the latter are rejected only when they are in conflict with other more accurate sense-perceptions, the former are rejected only when they are in conflict with other convictions which stand better the test of reflection. The existing body of moral convictions of the best people is the cumulative product of the moral reflection of many generations, which has developed an extremely delicate power of appreciation of moral distinctions; and this the theorist cannot afford to treat with anything other than the greatest respect. The verdicts of the moral consciousness of the best people are the foundation on which he must build; though he must first compare them with one another and eliminate any contradictions they may contain. (40-1.)

This remarkable passage has a number of intriguing elements in it. Firstly, and perhaps most overarchingly, it indicates a limitation on the persuasive power of revisionist theories of morality. These theories need to take seriously the sense that there already exists, prior to their being elaborated, a deep moral sense that has been historically generated. There is a similar point to this made in the first section of Kant's Groundwork where Kant likewise seeks to show that there is already contained in general moral consciousness sufficient for the theorist. Secondly, this limitation on revisionist theories, or certainly on their persuasiveness, is not merely stated in favour of conservatism although a first reading of this passage might suggest so. The point is not that existent moral claims be simply and wholly accepted as apt but rather that the aptness of these claims requires reflective consideration in relation to each other (much like in the case of Rawls' notion of "reflective equilibrium"). Thirdly, the revision allowed room by theory needs to be related to that which works through the consistency and coherency of the general body of convictions. So the revision does not merely succeed due to a general argument in its favour but also has to be stable in relation to the reflective self-criticism of the data of theory, namely, the settled convictions of the "best people". The oddity of the appeal finally resides however in this last point, namely, that there are some people ("the best" or those who are "thoughtful and well-educated") better able generically to carry out the reflective process in question. What enables this ability to reside in such people is not stated and surely it would here have been preferable to refer instead to a procedural mechanism rather than a settled group thought to already itself be a locus of wisdom?

Rawls, Non-Ideal Theory and War (I)

In a posting a couple of days ago I set out questions for how non-ideal theory might be considered in the context of the Law of Peoples. Now I want to begin to probe this discussion further through greater attention to the text of the work.  The first topic Rawls turns to in his discussion of non-ideal theory in this work concerns the right to war. Given that the conditions of non-ideal theory include consideration of states that are actively refusing compliance with the demands of ideal theory it is not surprising that Rawls begins his account of non-ideal theory here. 


The first point of some interest to note is that Rawls does nuance his discussion of "outlaw states" somewhat when he begins this part of his account. "Outlaw states", in their active rejection of the conditions of ideal theory, might be thought to be actively aggressive in their foreign policy. However, Rawls' account of these states does not classify all such as having such an aggressive intent. They can be termed "outlaw states" under another type of description, namely, because they adopt state policies that involve violation of at least some of their own citizens' human rights (what Rawls refers to here is the situation of "minorities"). Due to these policies they put themselves in defiance of the conditions of ideal theory (notably, in opposition to the equality of rights) and this opens them up to potential intervention by other states, even if they are not aggressive towards these other states.


So one type of right to war could involve protection of universal conditions of human rights. This is so even though the state acted against may have made no specific move against the well-ordered society that decides to intervene. This significant modification of the general international convention preventing aggressive warfare already points in the direction of what has come to be known as the "right to protect", a residue of the ambitious project of "liberal interventionism". 


Despite this modification of the general view adopted by international lawyers Rawls is in accord with the position generally recognised by the latter in rejecting any claim to war purely on the basis of a state's self-interest (which would allow aggressive war per se, not merely one advanced in protection of human rights). Well-ordered peoples, working in accord with principles of ideal theory, will therefore not engage in war with each other since they will have no aggressive intent towards each other and will not engage in suppression of the human rights of their own citizens. This being so, there will only be rights of war for such states with regard to "outlaw states".


There will, though, be a right to war in self-defence though Rawls differentiates the grounds for appeal to such a right between the different kinds of "well-ordered" societies his ideal theory recognises. Liberal societies engage in self-defense with the primary aim of defending and preserving basic freedoms. In such societies there exist institutions that are reflexively justified: that is, citizens are publicly and consciously informed by them in their actions and affirm them in their dealings with one another. So, when such societies affirm a right to war exists this will be done in ways that meet tests akin to those of Kant's affirmative principle of publicity discussed in Perpetual Peace.


Decent societies are subtly different since they would act in such a way that they would show respect for others even whilst being governed by comprehensive views. Rawls is less clear about the nature of their consultation hierarchy but I will venture for now that it fits more the negative publicity test of Perpetual Peace. Benevolent absolutisms are also described as including respect for human rights but as having no consultation process. In this respect these societies deny, in fact, a basic right, the right to have included a respect for the provision that laws enacted should be seen to relate to the potential of universal consent. Or this is how Kant would have seen it!


This is only the first part of the discussion of non-ideal theory with regard to war. Rawls goes on later to discuss conduct within war, as well as the right to declare war but I'll leave this for a later posting.

Sellars and Kant on Intuition (II)

In my last posting on this topic I looked at the first movement of the first chapter of Wilfrid Sellars' book Science and Metaphysics whose argument culminated with a problem concerning the notion that space is the "form of outer sense". Today I want to reconstruct and assess some of the elements of the second movement of this first chapter. 


Sellars opens the second movement by stating the up-shot of the first movement has been to suggest that representations of a manifold as a manifold, representations described by Kant as "intuitions", are a special class of representations of the understanding that belong to spontaneity, not to receptivity or at least not to "receptivity" in its "radical" or "sheer" sense. The "radical" or "sheer" sense of receptivity is, however, also now suggested to be a "postulate", albeit a transcendental one. The items which make up the manifold that belongs to the radical or sheer form of receptivity are, however, characterised by Sellars as "sense impressions" which ensures that what Sellars means by such impressions is somewhat different than the role they played in empiricist accounts.


Despite the fact that the place of "sense impressions" in Sellars' reconstruction of Kant is not equivalent to the role they play in empiricist accounts there is a consideration of how the role of this notion has often functioned within philosophy generally (and hence within empiricist accounts). The general account that follows focuses on the notion of an impression of a red rectangle which is analysed by Sellars as including three components. The first component is that what is meant by sensing this impression is that we are undergoing a conscious state. The second component concerns what is happening what this state is undergone which is that we are faced by a process in which this impression is, at least in "normal circumstances", brought about by physical objects that fit the appropriate description. The third component is that the impression in question represents the appropriate physical object.


Having analysed the experience in question through this discussion of its components Sellars goes on to discuss the understanding of the "state of consciousness". The phrase is itself described by him as "both ambiguous and obscure". The ambiguity is focused on first with the point initially made that such impressions, considered as states of consciousness, are often assimilated to bodily sensations and feelings. Sense impressions, in the broadest sense, are comprehended as "non-conceptual" and the impressions are understood as being not just "states" of consciousness but also as "objects" of it.


The question now arises as to whether the sense impressions are, as specific individuated "contents", themselves made objects of awareness (or, as Sellars puts it in more Kantian language, are "apperceived"). The point is made that once we grant the existence of such "impressions" it becomes almost impossible not to consider them as apperceived, particularly if we do not have care with our distinctions.


Cartesians, for example, have the possibility of saying that the specific, individuated, sense-impressions are objects of awareness but that they are things of which we are "inadequately" or only "obscurely" aware. Similar statements are made in a more recent vocabulary when philosophers suggest that we are not aware consciously of what the manifold of our senses "really" (physically, i.e., natural-scientifically) "represent". Sellars wishes to move away from such models precisely through his notion of "sheer receptivity" and its corresponding notion of "sense impression". So the point is that the classic uses of "sense impression" which develop this sense of "inadequacy" do so because they have not really distinguished the two senses of "receptivity".


In response, then, to the classic pictures of sense impressions we arrive now at a notion of them that allows for the possibility that such impressions are not specifically given to us as objects of awareness. In a sense, this fits, according to Sellars, with Kant's usage since he need not relate to any such manifold of "sheer receptivity" as something of which we are aware. 


The second movement of the chapter appears, therefore, to consist mainly in developing and substantiating the concept of "sheer receptivity" and indicating the way in which it allows for a clarified sense of "sense impression" but Sellars, in this movement, does not yet fill out the place this will philosophically occupy for him in any serious detail and nor has he, as yet, returned fully to the way in which his renovation of the Kantian conception will both build on, and away from, Kant's own view.

Rawls, Non-Ideal Theory and International Relations

In yesterday's posting the topic of the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory for John Rawls reached the point of intersection with his view of international relations as expressed in his book The Law of Peoples. In this work, one of Rawls last publications, he describes two forms of society that match the generic conditions of non-ideal theory. On the one hand, there are "burdened societies" that are the victim of historical contingencies and as a result of these we would expect that their application of the conditions of ideal theory is partial and compromised. On the other hand, there are societies that deliberately and consciously work against the conditions of ideal theory and these latter are termed "outlaw states". This opens out the question of how states that approximate more closely to the conditions of ideal theory should deal with states in the two positions that are decidedly non-ideal.


At the opening of the discussion of non-ideal theory in the Law of Peoples Rawls describes the need for "policies and courses of action" that are are "morally permissible and politically possible as well as likely to be effective". There are here three distinct requirements that could in principle be independently detailed and related to each other. Rawls does not specify either how these notions are to be understood or how the relationship between them should be guided which ensures that there is rather ample space left here for "intuition". Nor does Rawls discuss whether we should aim in dealing with these requirements at conditions that follow some general rule that is independent of them all whether that rule be one of some general maxim of efficiency or expediency or utility.  There is, however, some guidance in the pages of Theory since in section 46 of it Rawls gives two priority rules, one that that has been discussed previously to the effect that liberty has priority over the second principle of equality and the other that states justice has priority over efficiency and welfare. This second rule addresses our query here in stating that the principle of equality is prior to any principle of efficiency (including utility). 


The notion of "moral permissibility" listed at the opening of the discussion of non-ideal theory in the Law of Peoples is not further specified there. Back in Theory we note in section 19 a discussion of what Rawls terms "natural duties" and it might be reasonable to assume that these would form part of the guidance for what is "morally permissible". Included there under the heading of "natural duties" we find duties of mutual aid (pertinent with regard to "burdened societies"), duties of non-maleficence and duties of beneficence. Here Rawls also specifically wrote that such duties should be recognised in the conduct of states.


With regard to the question of "political possibility" and "likely effectiveness" there are further questions. Firstly, what is politically possible may be what is possible within certain societies in relation to others. So, despite being well-ordered, some societies might manifest more or less tendencies amongst their citizens to either help other societies or engage in confrontation with them. This may make some actions more or less "politically possible". Similarly, what is "effective" may not be what is most "possible". And, what is understood to be "effective" could be either measures that remove specific injustices or the overall group of injustices. Removal of some specific injustices might be more "politically possible" and yet have little overall effect on the general conditions of injustice. Presumably the best outcome (though this involves some notion of optimality) would be to remove the general conditions of injustice but this might well not only lead to some specific injustices being unaddressed but could even lead to circumstances that perpetuated these specific injustices.


These problems point up matters that need to be considered when reading through the discussion of non-ideal theory in the Law of Peoples in more detail as I intend to do on a future occasion.

Rawls on Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory (III)

In my last posting on this topic I discussed the way in which Rawls' lexical priority of principles was meant to limit the role of intuition in non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory is meant to deal with conditions of non-compliance and Rawls discusses two types of way this is meant to work. On the one hand, there are natural limitations and historical contingencies. On the other hand, there need to be principles for how to "meet" injustice. If we relate the principle of liberty to principles of non-compliance, for example, we can see one of the "permanent" conditions of human life concerns the need for order and this need limits, in certain respects, the application of the principle of liberty. The "meeting" of injustice has to be assessed by, for example, considering the ways in which liberty has to deal with those who lack tolerance and in regard to them we have to draw lines that show ways in which tolerance gets limited. However the degrees of limitation of this principle of liberty are quite different to the degrees of limitation of Rawls' second principle (concerning equality) given the lexical priority of this principle over the second principle.


Rawls' discussion of historical contingencies is, however, only really appropriately part of non-ideal theory in certain respects since he makes clear that paternalistic principles (such as apply in treatment of children) are really not based on departures from ideal principles but rather on applications of them to special circumstances. By contrast, in section 26 of Theory he points to cases in which "social circumstances do not allow the effective establishment" of basic rights such as are given in the two principles. In those cases there is a sense in which they are limited by serious historical contingencies which can even effect the degree to which the principle of liberty is given appliance. (Though this has to be "essential" to changing the "conditions of civilization".) Interestingly, there is also mention in section 11 of Theory of something called the "general conception" of justice and there it is stated that the two principles are special cases of this more general conception. Rawls gives there a formulation of this general conception:

All social values--liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect--are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage.

This formula even leads Rawls in section 11 to describe injustice in the most general way he gives, namely as "inequalities that are not to the benefit of all". If there is such a general conception, then what role does it play in relation to "historical contingencies" by contrast to the specific principles on the one hand and reference to non-compliance notions on the other? Rawls appears to give no specific answer to this question although we might expect that the more general principle would have to guide how we limited the specific principles especially given the lexical priority of the first of the special principles over the second.


When Rawls comes to international theory in the Law of Peoples the distinction between the two elements of non-ideal theory produces a clearer division than we appear to reach in Theory alone though the divisions of the Law of Peoples have problems of their own. Included within "ideal theory" here are the "decent peoples" that are not liberal democratic societies since the nature of the law set out in ideal theory here is meant to be one that such peoples could agree to, in line with the divergence from the strict conditions of compliance that were laid out in Theory but later somewhat attenuated in Political Liberalism. As the latter lays out a notion of a society that does not meet the strict conditions of Theory due to Rawls' intervening abandonment of the notion of "comprehensive views" so the Law of Peoples operates with a notion of ideal theory that can allow the "decent peoples" to be included within the ambit of ideal theory. Questions about that will have to wait until a different time though.


The more important point for today's posting is that the province of non-ideal theory is more sharply presented in the Law of Peoples than in Theory. Now Rawls describes non-ideal theory in such a way that its two elements relate to two different kinds of society. The society that has the unfavourable conditions referred to in Theory is now described as a "burdened society" whilst the one that outright refuses to relate to the principles of well-ordered societies are now termed "outlaw states". This division resumes the distinction from Theory and now requires the conditions of non-ideal theory to be laid out in a more determinate way in reference to more fully-rounded conceptions of the societies that operate in accordance with its two parts. However, if we apply to the former the reasoning that Rawls used with regard to the general conditions of divergence from ideal theory in Theory then it should follow that departure from conditions of ideal theory in the cases of "burdened societies" are not necessarily in themselves unjust. This raises some interesting questions with regard to how the conduct of those societies would have to assessed on Rawls' model and what is meant by describing their conditions in relation to the "general" conception of justice. I will subsequently return to these questions as we begin to look in more detail at how this distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory is meant to work in Rawls' theory of international relations.

Belief and Philosophy

Before going into the substantive content of this posting I should first like to announce the launching of an exciting new site: Philosophy TV. It is clearly modelled on Blogging Heads but it is not focused on current affairs topics but rather on matters of philosophical dispute. The first one featured prompted some thoughts on my own part that led me to decide to write this posting.


In the first debate we have two contemporary philosophers who discuss a question of considerable interest. This concerns what is going on when people explicitly announce certain beliefs that many of their actions and dispositions fail to support and the substantive debate then centres on different characterisations of this tension. However, rather than attempting to resolve the actual debate between Tamar Gendler and Eric Schwitzgebel on this question I would prefer to shift the debate somewhat by looking at some points that are shared between them and which help to define some aspects of contemporary epistemology that bother me.


Firstly, the debate centres on what is meant by ascribing "beliefs" to someone. The "belief" model that both participants, to a certain degree, are questioning is one that assumes we can say what someone believes by attending to the pattern of things they are liable to say and the reasons they give for saying them. In both cases, the tension is noted between these avowals and the behaviours and dispositions to behave that people have. Such tension then motivates the two different accounts. The noting of the tension and the attempt to generate views that deal with it is what makes the discussion novel. What is not novel, however, is a fixation on "belief" itself. This fixation is partly concerned to move away with concerns with "knowledge" but also has its roots in a generic Humean kind of view. Gendler towards the end directly cites Hume and the framing of the discussion around the findings of contemporary empirical psychology is one that also ensures the fixing of the Humean model since much contemporary "empirical psychology" already includes a number of fundamental and unquestioned philosophical assumptions.


Secondly, although the move in the discussion towards the example of what is involved in responding to such an important matter as racial understanding is a shift from standard examples such as belief that something is red and is interesting in re-framing questions in ways that appear more substantive still there are large areas of "belief" that appear not to be addressed. So, in ordinary speech, when people speak of "belief" they are indeed referring to things like the racial example or to political beliefs or to religious beliefs. But when we look at topics of religious and political beliefs it strikes me that there are some large questions that the predominant model does not deal with. For example, if someone is a believing Christian, then, according to the group they belong to, they have signed up to a number of propositions as things they take to be true. But in what sense is it the case that this is really what they have done? What does "belief" mean in such a case as opposed to the more mundane levels where philosophical analysis usually focuses? It isn't just that there is apparently quite a lot involved in belief in a religious group's doctrines or that the scope of them is very large. It is also that there are no items picked out in the world by these beliefs (or this is largely true, some cases complicate the matter). Since this is so what is "believed in" is not something that is open to check by any of the means taken to be standardly appropriate in the more mundane cases. There are similar problems with political beliefs since these are capable of mutation in such subtle ways that they never clearly map the world. So I find the philosophical debates about "belief" curiously isolated from what often, in the area outside philosophy, are normally taken to be key cases of "belief".


The third problem, connected with the second, is why it is that philosophical analysis of "belief" seems to be so insistently tied to looking at what is going on with particular individual believers. There exist "belief systems" and one question that has always intrigued me concerns the sense involved in stating that large numbers of people "believe" something to be the case. In one sense there are some apparently unproblematic examples. So the majority of people who have at all considered it hold the belief that the world is a sphere and that it rotates around the sun. It is true, even with this belief, that there are complexities. Anyone aware, in any degree of detail, of cosmology and astronomy, will have a more sophisticated sense of such a matter than the majority who are not so aware. Similarly, those exposed seriously to phenomenology or to concentrated philosophy of science will have a different but also deeply reflective view of these matters that is again different to the view of the majority. So even here there is a sense in which the majority don't "believe" in the propositions in question in the same way as the separate sophisticated groups just mentioned. Even more is this the case with bodies of "beliefs" that have apparently embraced large numbers of people with religious beliefs and political ideologies foremost. In such cases there are amazing levels of difference between people and a genuine puzzle, for me at least, what sense it makes to claim all these different levels converge on the same "belief".


Somehow, however, these questions about philosophical analysis of belief never seem to be raised or related to as substantive problems. So I thought I would lay that out as a point that might be worth consideration in future philosophical discussions.

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PPE and the British Political Class

A lovely story over at the BBC today runs to the effect that taking a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford is something of a requirement for political leaders here in the UK. The evidence cited for this claim is that six members of the current cabinet did so as did three of the current candidates for leadership of the Labour Party along with four previous cabinet members not running in the race. A second strand of evidence is to the effect that of the six hundred or so current members of parliament there are 35 who studied the course and that 2 previous Prime Ministers took it.


Initially this evidence looks impressive though what it shows is less than it seems. It is not in itself news that many members of parliament, of all parties, took degrees at Oxford or that the general political class have mainly studied humanities and social science courses rather than the "vocational" ones they tend to recommend for everyone else and which themselves have less economic rationale than they tend to claim. It is also not discussed in the BBC story which options the politicians cited stay with since it is necessary on the course to drop one of the three options at the end of the first year. This would have been interesting to have some sense of. Do they drop economics as seemed to be normal when I taught on this course and could this help to explain a number of poor government decisions? Do they drop philosophy, something which might explain the poor political theories that abound amongst politicians? Or would they even - gasp!- drop politics?


Fun aside, the story has produced some predictable reactions such as bemoaning the lack of science education of our political leaders, something that plays into the narrative these same leaders like to spin. Surely it would be more interesting to ask why it is that these leaders themselves emphasise qualities in their own education that they later downplay in importance for others? Perhaps it could be that the advantages of studying subjects such as philosophy and economics are things they wish to keep for themselves? Or maybe they really were turned off by rather dull Oxford teachers whose grasp of how to turn students towards philosophical problems was less than we might wish?

Not the Kant Conference Report

Today the annual conference of the UK Kant Society begins. There are a couple of unusual features this year. The first is that the conference this year is a joint one with the Hegel Society of Great Britain. As a result the programme has a different feel to usual but includes some papers that certainly promise much.


The other unusual feature is that I won't be attending this year. This is due to two circumstances. Firstly, I was late in attempting to register for various reasons, including an unusually busy summer. The second is that the conference is over-subscribed and no new registrations were available. On one level this is definitely good news since it shows enhanced interest in Kantian and Hegelian philosophy which is surely all for the best. The level on which it is less good news is that people - not just me! - have been turned away from the event, something surely not good. This seems to have arisen not merely due to a good level of interest but also because the venue booked for the event was simply too small. Because of this I will not this year, unlike last, be able to post a report on the event for those unable to attend who may have wished to have an account of what transpired. Here's hoping someone else provides the report in my stead!