Empirical evidence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and plays a role in various other fields, like epistemology and law.

There is no general agreement on how the terms evidence and empirical are to be defined. Often different fields work with quite different conceptions. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain belief is rational. This is only possible if the evidence is possessed by the person, which has prompted various epistemologists to conceive evidence as private mental states like experiences or other beliefs. In philosophy of science, on the other hand, evidence is understood as that which confirms or disconfirms scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. For this role, it is important that evidence is public and uncontroversial, like observable physical objects or events and unlike private mental states, so that evidence may foster scientific consensus. The term empirical comes from Greek ἐμπειρία empeiría, i.e. 'experience'. In this context, it is usually understood as what is observable, in contrast to unobservable or theoretical objects. It is generally accepted that unaided perception constitutes observation, but it is disputed to what extent objects accessible only to aided perception, like bacteria seen through a microscope or positrons detected in a cloud chamber, should be regarded as observable.

Empirical evidence is essential to a posteriori knowledge or empirical knowledge, knowledge whose justification or falsification depends on experience or experiment. A priori knowledge, on the other hand, is seen either as innate or as justified by rational intuition and therefore as not dependent on empirical evidence. Rationalism fully accepts that there is knowledge a priori, which is either outright rejected by empiricism or accepted only in a restricted way as knowledge of relations between our concepts but not as pertaining to the external world.

Scientific evidence is closely related to empirical evidence but not all forms of empirical evidence meet the standards dictated by scientific methods. Sources of empirical evidence are sometimes divided into observation and experimentation, the difference being that only experimentation involves manipulation or intervention: phenomena are actively created instead of being passively observed.

Background

Main article: Evidence

The concept of evidence is of central importance in epistemology and in philosophy of science but plays different roles in these two fields. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what determines whether holding a certain doxastic attitude is rational. For example, the olfactory experience of smelling smoke justifies or makes it rational to hold the belief that something is burning. It is usually held that for justification to work, the evidence has to be possessed by the believer. The most straightforward way to account for this type of evidence possession is to hold that evidence consists of the private mental states possessed by the believer.

Some philosophers restrict evidence even further, for example, to only conscious, propositional or factive mental states. Restricting evidence to conscious mental states has the implausible consequence that many simple everyday beliefs would be unjustified. This is why it is more common to hold that all kinds of mental states, including stored but currently unconscious beliefs, can act as evidence. Various of the roles played by evidence in reasoning, for example, in explanatory, probabilistic and deductive reasoning, suggest that evidence has to be propositional in nature, i.e. that it is correctly expressed by propositional attitude verbs like "believe" together with a that-clause, like "that something is burning". But it runs counter to the common practice of treating non-propositional sense-experiences, like bodily pains, as evidence. Its defenders sometimes combine it with the view that evidence has to be factive, i.e. that only attitudes towards true propositions constitute evidence. In this view, there is no misleading evidence. The olfactory experience of smoke would count as evidence if it was produced by a fire but not if it was produced by a smoke generator. This position has problems in explaining why it is still rational for the subject to believe that there is a fire even though the olfactory experience cannot be considered evidence.

In philosophy of science, evidence is understood as that which confirms or disconfirms scientific hypotheses and arbitrates between competing theories. Measurements of Mercury's "anomalous" orbit, for example, constitute evidence that plays the role of neutral arbiter between Newton's and Einstein's theory of gravitation by confirming Einstein's theory. For scientific consensus, it is central that evidence is public and uncontroversial, like observable physical objects or events and unlike private mental states. This way it can act as a shared ground for proponents of competing theories. Two issues threatening this role are the problem of underdetermination and theory-ladenness. The problem of underdetermination concerns the fact that the available evidence often provides equal support to either theory and therefore cannot arbitrate between them. Theory-ladenness refers to the idea that evidence already includes theoretical assumptions. These assumptions can hinder it from acting as neutral arbiter. It can also lead to a lack of shared evidence if different scientists do not share these assumptions. Thomas Kuhn is an important advocate of the position that theory-ladenness in relation to scientific paradigms plays a central role in science.

Definition

A thing is evidence for a proposition if it epistemically supports this proposition or indicates that the supported proposition is true. Evidence is empirical if it is constituted by or accessible to sensory experience. There are various competing theories about the exact definition of the terms evidence and empirical. Different fields, like epistemology, the sciences or legal systems, often associate different concepts with these terms. An important distinction among theories of evidence is whether they identify evidence with private mental states or with public physical objects. Concerning the term empirical, there is a dispute about where to draw the line between observable or empirical objects in contrast to unobservable or merely theoretical objects.

The traditional view proposes that evidence is empirical if it is constituted by or accessible to sensory experience. This involves experiences arising from the stimulation of the sense organs, like visual or auditory experiences, but the term is often used in a wider sense including memories and introspection. It is usually seen as excluding purely intellectual experiences, like rational insights or intuitions used to justify basic logical or mathematical principles. The terms empirical and observable are closely related and sometimes used as synonyms.

There is an active debate in contemporary philosophy of science as to what should be regarded as observable or empirical in contrast to unobservable or merely theoretical objects. There is general consensus that everyday objects like books or houses are observable since they are accessible via unaided perception, but disagreement starts for objects that are only accessible through aided perception. This includes using telescopes to study distant galaxies, microscopes to study bacteria or using cloud chambers to study positrons. So the question is whether distant galaxies, bacteria or positrons should be regarded as observable or merely theoretical objects. Some even hold that any measurement process of an entity should be considered an observation of this entity. So in this sense, the interior of the sun is observable since neutrinos originating there can be detected. The difficulty with this debate is that there is a continuity of cases going from looking at something with the naked eye, through a window, through a pair of glasses, through a microscope, etc. Because of this continuity, drawing the line between any two adjacent cases seems to be arbitrary. One way to avoid these difficulties is to hold that it is a mistake to identify the empirical with what is observable or sensible. Instead, it has been suggested that empirical evidence can include unobservable entities as long as they are detectable through suitable measurements. A problem with this approach is that it is rather far from the original meaning of "empirical", which contains the reference to experience.

Related concepts

Knowledge a posteriori and a priori

Main article: A priori and a posteriori

Knowledge or the justification of a belief is said to be a posteriori if it is based on empirical evidence. A posteriori refers to what depends on experience (what comes after experience), in contrast to a priori, which stands for what is independent of experience (what comes before experience). For example, the proposition that "all bachelors are unmarried" is knowable a priori since its truth only depends on the meanings of the words used in the expression. The proposition "some bachelors are happy", on the other hand, is only knowable a posteriori since it depends on experience of the world as its justifier. Immanuel Kant held that the difference between a posteriori and a priori is tantamount to the distinction between empirical and non-empirical knowledge.

Two central questions for this distinction concern the relevant sense of "experience" and of "dependence". The paradigmatic justification of knowledge a posteriori consists in sensory experience, but other mental phenomena, like memory or introspection, are also usually included in it. But purely intellectual experiences, like rational insights or intuitions used to justify basic logical or mathematical principles, are normally excluded from it. There are different senses in which knowledge may be said to depend on experience. In order to know a proposition, the subject has to be able to entertain this proposition, i.e. possess the relevant concepts. For example, experience is necessary to entertain the proposition "if something is red all over then it is not green all over" because the terms "red" and "green" have to be acquired this way. But the sense of dependence most relevant to empirical evidence concerns the status of justification of a belief. So experience may be needed to acquire the relevant concepts in the example above, but once these concepts are possessed, no further experience providing empirical evidence is needed to know that the proposition is true, which is why it is considered to be justified a priori.

Empiricism and rationalism

In its strictest sense, empiricism is the view that all knowledge is based on experience or that all epistemic justification arises from empirical evidence. This stands in contrast to the rationalist view, which holds that some knowledge is independent of experience, either because it is innate or because it is justified by reason or rational reflection alone. Expressed through the distinction between knowledge a priori and a posteriori from the previous section, rationalism affirms that there is knowledge a priori, which is denied by empiricism in this strict form. One difficulty for empiricists is to account for the justification of knowledge pertaining to fields like mathematics and logic, for example, that 3 is a prime number or that modus ponens is a valid form of deduction. The difficulty is due to the fact that there seems to be no good candidate of empirical evidence that could justify these beliefs. Such cases have prompted empiricists to allow for certain forms of knowledge a priori, for example, concerning tautologies or relations between our concepts. These concessions preserve the spirit of empiricism insofar as the restriction to experience still applies to knowledge about the external world. In some fields, like metaphysics or ethics, the choice between empiricism and rationalism makes a difference not just for how a given claim is justified but for whether it is justified at all. This is best exemplified in metaphysics, where empiricists tend to take a skeptical position, thereby denying the existence of metaphysical knowledge, while rationalists seek justification for metaphysical claims in metaphysical intuitions.

Scientific evidence

Main article: Scientific evidence

Scientific evidence is closely related to empirical evidence. Some theorists, like Carlos Santana, have argued that there is a sense in which not all empirical evidence constitutes scientific evidence. One reason for this is that the standards or criteria that scientists apply to evidence exclude certain evidence that is legitimate in other contexts.^[38] For example, anecdotal evidence from a friend about how to treat a certain disease constitutes empirical evidence that this treatment works but would not be considered scientific evidence.^[38][39] Others have argued that the traditional empiricist definition of empirical evidence as perceptual evidence is too narrow for much of scientific practice, which uses evidence from various kinds of non-perceptual equipment.^[40]

Central to scientific evidence is that it was arrived at by following scientific method in the context of some scientific theory.^[41] But people rely on various forms of empirical evidence in their everyday lives that have not been obtained this way and therefore do not qualify as scientific evidence. One problem with non-scientific evidence is that it is less reliable, for example, due to cognitive biases like the anchoring effect,^[42] in which information obtained earlier is given more weight, although science done poorly is also subject to such biases, as in the example of p-hacking.^[38]

Observation, experimentation and scientific method

In the philosophy of science, it is sometimes held that there are two sources of empirical evidence: observation and experimentation.^[43] The idea behind this distinction is that only experimentation involves manipulation or intervention: phenomena are actively created instead of being passively observed.^[44][45][46] For example, inserting viral DNA into a bacterium is a form of experimentation while studying planetary orbits through a telescope belongs to mere observation.^[47] In these cases, the mutated DNA was actively produced by the biologist while the planetary orbits are independent of the astronomer observing them. Applied to the history of science, it is sometimes held that ancient science is mainly observational while the emphasis on experimentation is only present in modern science and responsible for the scientific revolution.^[44] This is sometimes phrased through the expression that modern science actively "puts questions to nature".^[47] This distinction also underlies the categorization of sciences into experimental sciences, like physics, and observational sciences, like astronomy. While the distinction is relatively intuitive in paradigmatic cases, it has proven difficult to give a general definition of "intervention" applying to all cases, which is why it is sometimes outright rejected.^[47][44]

Empirical evidence is required for a hypothesis to gain acceptance in the scientific community. Normally, this validation is achieved by the scientific method of forming a hypothesis, experimental design, peer review, reproduction of results, conference presentation, and journal publication. This requires rigorous communication of hypothesis (usually expressed in mathematics), experimental constraints and controls (expressed in terms of standard experimental apparatus), and a common understanding of measurement. In the scientific context, the term semi-empirical is used for qualifying theoretical methods that use, in part, basic axioms or postulated scientific laws and experimental results. Such methods are opposed to theoretical ab initio methods, which are purely deductive and based on first principles. Typical examples of both ab initio and semi-empirical methods can be found in computational chemistry.

 

Objective idealism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Objective idealism is a philosophical theory that affirms the ideal and spiritual nature of the world and conceives of the idea of which the world is made as the objective and rational form in reality rather than as subjective content of the mind or mental representation. Objective idealism thus differs both from materialism, which holds that the external world is independent of cognizing minds and that mental processes and ideas are by-products of physical events, and from subjective idealism, which conceives of reality as totally dependent on the consciousness of the subject and therefore relative to the subject itself.

Objective idealism starts with Plato’s theory of forms, which mantains that objectively existing but non-material "ideas" give form to reality, thus shaping its basic building blocks.

Within German idealism, objective idealism identifies with the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling. According to Schelling, the rational or spiritual elements of reality are supposed to give conceptual structure to reality and ultimately constitute reality, to the point that nature and mind, matter and concept, are essentially identical: their distinction is merely psychological and depends on our predisposition to distinguish the "outside us" (nature, world) from the "in us" (mind, spirit). Within that tradition of philosophical thought, the entire world manifests itself through ideas and is governed by purposes or ends: regardless of the existence of a self-conscious subject, all reality is a manifestation of reason.

The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce defined his own version of objective idealism as follows:

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws (Peirce, CP 6.25).

By "objective idealism", Pierce meant that material objects such as organisms have evolved out of mind, that is, out of feelings ("such as pain, blue, cheerfulness") that are immediately present to consciousness. Contrary to Hegel, who identified mind with conceptual thinking or reason, Pierce identified it with feeling, and he claimed that at the origins of the world there was "a chaos of unpersonalized feelings", i.e., feelings that were not located in any individual subject. Therefore, in the 1890s Pierce's philosophy referred to itself as subjective idealism because it held that the mind comes first and the world is essentially mind (idealism) and the mind is independent of individuals (objectivism).

Objective idealism has also been defined as a form of metaphysical idealism that accepts Naïve realism (the view that empirical objects exist objectively) but rejects epiphenomenalist materialism (according to which the mind and spiritual values have emerged due to material causes), as opposed to subjective idealism denies that material objects exist independently of human perception and thus stands opposed to both realism and naturalism.

Absolute idealism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Absolute idealism is an ontologically monistic philosophy chiefly associated with G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schelling, both of whom were German idealist philosophers in the 19th century. The label has also been attached to others such as Josiah Royce, an American philosopher who was greatly influenced by Hegel's work, and the British idealists.

A form of idealism, absolute idealism is Hegel's account of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole (das Absolute). Hegel asserted that in order for the thinking subject (human reason or consciousness) to be able to know its object (the world) at all, there must be in some sense an identity of thought and being. Otherwise, the subject would never have access to the object and we would have no certainty about any of our knowledge of the world.

To account for the differences between thought and being, however, as well as the richness and diversity of each, the unity of thought and being cannot be expressed as the abstract identity "A=A". Absolute idealism is the attempt to demonstrate this unity using a new "speculative" philosophical method, which requires new concepts and rules of logic. According to Hegel, the absolute ground of being is essentially a dynamic, historical process of necessity that unfolds by itself in the form of increasingly complex forms of being and of consciousness, ultimately giving rise to all the diversity in the world and in the concepts with which we think and make sense of the world.

The absolute idealist position dominated philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain and Germany, while exerting significantly less influence in the United States. The absolute idealist position should be distinguished from the subjective idealism of Berkeley, the transcendental idealism of Kant, or the post-Kantian transcendental idealism (also known as critical idealism) of Fichte and of the early Schelling.

Schelling and Hegel's Absolute

Dieter Henrich characterized Hegel's conception of the absolute as follows: "The absolute is the finite to the extent to which the finite is nothing at all but negative relation to itself" (Henrich 1982, p. 82). As Bowie describes it, Hegel's system depends upon showing how each view and positing of how the world really has an internal contradiction: "This necessarily leads thought to more comprehensive ways of grasping the world, until the point where there can be no more comprehensive way because there is no longer any contradiction to give rise to it."

For Hegel, the interaction of opposites generates, in a dialectical fashion, all concepts we use in order to understand the world. Moreover, this development occurs not only in the individual mind, but also throughout history. In The Phenomenology of Spirit, for example, Hegel presents a history of human consciousness as a journey through stages of explanations of the world. Each successive explanation created problems and oppositions within itself, leading to tensions which could only be overcome by adopting a view that could accommodate these oppositions in a higher unity.

For Kant, reason was only for us, and the categories only emerged within the subject. However, for Hegel, reason is embodied, or immanent within being and the world. Reason is immanent within nature, and spirit emerges out of nature. Spirit is self-conscious reason knowing itself as reason.

The aim of Hegel was to show that we do not relate to the world as if it is other from us, but that we continue to find ourselves embedded in that world. With the realization that both mind and world are ordered according to the same rational principles, our access to the world has been made secure, a security which had been lost in Kant's proclamation that the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich) was ultimately inaccessible.

The importance of 'love' within the formulation of the absolute has also been cited by Hegel throughout his works:

The life of God — the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things — may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.

Yet Hegel did not see Christianity per se as the route through which one reaches the absolute, but used its religious system as an historical exemplar of absolute spirit. Arriving at such an absolute was the domain of philosophy and theoretical inquiry. For Hegel speculative philosophy presented the religious content in an elevated, self-aware form.

Hegel's position is a critical transformation of the concept of the absolute advanced by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854), who argued for a philosophy of Identity:

‘Absolute identity’ is, then, the link of the two aspects of being, which, on the one hand, is the universe, and, on the other, is the changing multiplicity which the knowable universe also is. Schelling insists now that “The I think, I am, is, since Descartes, the basic mistake of all knowledge; thinking is not my thinking, and being is not my being, for everything is only of God or the totality” (SW I/7, p. 148), so the I is ‘affirmed’ as a predicate of the being by which it is preceded.

Yet this absolute is different from Hegel's, which necessarily a telos or end result of the dialectic of multiplicities of consciousness throughout human history. For Schelling, the absolute is a causeless 'ground' upon which relativity (difference and similarity) can be discerned by human judgement (and thus permit 'freedom' itself) and this ground must be simultaneously not of the 'particular' world of finites but also not wholly different from them (or else there would be no commensurability with empirical reality, objects, sense data, etc. to be compared as 'relative' or otherwise):

The particular is determined in judgements, but the truth of claims about the totality cannot be proven because judgements are necessarily conditioned, whereas the totality is not. Given the relative status of the particular there must, though, be a ground which enables us to be aware of that relativity, and this ground must have a different status from the knowable world of finite particulars. At the same time, if the ground were wholly different from the world of relative particulars the problems of dualism would recur. As such the absolute is the finite, but we do not know this in the manner we know the finite. Without the presupposition of ‘absolute identity’, therefore, the evident relativity of particular knowledge becomes inexplicable, since there would be no reason to claim that a revised judgement is predicated of the same world as the preceding — now false — judgement.

In both Schelling and Hegel's 'systems' (especially the latter), the project aims towards a completion of metaphysics in such a way as to prioritize rational thinking (Vernuft), individual freedom, and philosophical and historical progress into a unity. Inspired by the system-building of previous Enlightenment thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Schelling and Hegel pushed idealism into new ontological territory (especially notable in Hegel's The Science of Logic (1812-16)), wherein a 'concept' of thought and its content are not distinguished, as Redding describes it:

While opinions divide as to how Hegel's approach to logic relates to that of Kant, it is important to grasp that for Hegel logic is not simply a science of the form of our thoughts. It is also a science of actual content as well, and as such has an ontological dimension.

Therefore, syllogisms of logic like those espoused in the ancient world by Aristotle and crucial to the logic of Medieval philosophy, became not simply abstractions like mathematical equations but ontological necessities to describe existence itself, and therefore to be able to derive 'truth' from such existence using reason and the dialectic method of understanding. Whereas rationality was the key to completing Hegel's philosophical system, Schelling could not accept the absolutism prioritzed to Reason. Bowie elaborates on this:

Hegel's system tries to obviate the facticity of the world by understanding reason as the world's immanent self-articulation. Schelling, in contrast, insists that human reason cannot explain its own existence, and therefore cannot encompass itself and its other within a system of philosophy. We cannot, [Schelling] maintains, make sense of the manifest world by beginning with reason, but must instead begin with the contingency of being and try to make sense of it with the reason which is only one aspect of it and which cannot be explained in terms of its being a representation of the true nature of being.

Schelling's skepticism towards the prioritization of reason in the dialectic system constituting the Absolute, therefore pre-empted the vast body of philosophy that would react against Hegelianism in the modern era. Schelling's view of reason, however, was not to discard it, as would Nietzsche, but on the contrary, to use nature as its embodiment. For Schelling, reason was an organic 'striving' in nature (not just anthropocentric) and this striving was one in which the subject and the object approached an identity. Schelling saw reason as the link between spirit and the phenomenal world, as Lauer explains: "For Schelling [...] nature is not the negative of reason, to be submitted to it as reason makes the world its home, but has since its inception been turning itself into a home for reason." In Schelling's Further Presentation of My System of Philosophy (Werke Ergänzungsband I, 391-424), he argued that the comprehension of a thing is done through reason only when we see it in a whole. So Beiser (p. 17) explains:

The task of philosophical construction is then to grasp the identity of each particular with the whole of all things. To gain such knowledge we should focus upon a thing by itself, apart from its relations to anything else; we should consider it as a single, unique whole, abstracting from all its properties, which are only its partial aspects, and which relate it to other things. Just as in mathematical construction we abstract from all the accidental features of a figure (it is written with chalk, it is on a blackboard) to see it as a perfect exemplar of some universal truth, so in philosophical construction we abstract from all the specific properties of an object to see it in the absolute whole.

Hegel's doubts about intellectual intuition's ability to prove or legitimate that the particular is in identity with whole, led him to progressively formulate the system of the dialectic, now known as the Hegelian dialectic, in which concepts like the Aufhebung came to be articulated in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Beiser (p. 19) summarizes the early formulation as follows:

a) Some finite concept, true of only a limited part of reality, would go beyond its limits in attempting to know all of reality. It would claim to be an adequate concept to describe the absolute because, like the absolute, it has a complete or self-sufficient meaning independent of any other concept.

b) This claim would come into conflict with the fact that the concept depends for its meaning on some other concept, having meaning only in contrast to its negation. There would then be a contradiction between its claim to independence and its de facto dependence upon another concept.

c) The only way to resolve the contradiction would be to reinterpret the claim to independence, so that it applies not just to one concept to the exclusion of the other but to the whole of both concepts. Of course, the same stages could be repeated on a higher level, and so on, until we come to the complete system of all concepts, which is alone adequate to describe the absolute.

Hegel's innovation in the history of German Idealism was for a self-consciousness or self-questioning, that would lead to a more inclusive, holistic rationality of the world. The synthesis of one concept, deemed independently true per se, with another contradictory concept (e.g. the first is in fact dependent on some other thing), leads to the history of rationality, throughout human (largely European) civilization. For the German Idealists like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the extrapolation or universalization of the human process of contradiction and reconciliation, whether conceptually, theoretically, or emotionally, were all movements of the universe itself. It is understandable then, why so many philosophers saw deep problems with Hegel's all-encompassing attempt at fusing anthropocentric and Eurocentric epistemology, ontology, and logic into a singular system of thought that would admit no alternative.

Neo-Hegelianism

See also: Post-Hegelianism

Neo-Hegelianism is a school (or schools) of thought associated and inspired by the works of Hegel.

It refers mainly to the doctrines of an idealist school of philosophers that were prominent in Great Britain and in the United States between 1870 and 1920. The name is also sometimes applied to cover other philosophies of the period that were Hegelian in inspiration—for instance, those of Benedetto Croce and of Giovanni Gentile.

Hegelianism after Hegel

Although Hegel died in 1831, his philosophy still remains highly debated and discussed. In politics, there was a developing schism, even before his death, between right Hegelians and left Hegelians. The latter specifically took on political dimensions in the form of Marxism.

In the philosophy of religion, Hegel's influence soon became very powerful in the English-speaking world. The British school, called British idealism and partly Hegelian in inspiration, included Thomas Hill Green, Bernard Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley, William Wallace, and Edward Caird. It was importantly directed towards political philosophy and political and social policy, but also towards metaphysics and logic, as well as aesthetics.

America saw the development of a school of Hegelian thought move toward pragmatism.

German twentieth-century neo-Hegelians

In Germany there was a neo-Hegelianism (Neuhegelianismus) of the early twentieth century, partly developing out of the Neo-Kantians. Richard Kroner wrote one of its leading works, a history of German idealism from a Hegelian point of view.

Other notable neo-Hegelians

• Karl Marx (1818–1883), a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.
• Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924), a British absolute idealist who adapted Hegel's Metaphysics.
• Bernard Bosanquet (1848–1923), a British idealist and speculative philosopher who had an important influence in political philosophy and public and social policy.
• Josiah Royce (1855–1916), an American defender of absolute idealism.
• Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), an Italian philosopher who defended Hegel's account on how we understand history. Croce wrote primarily on topics of aesthetics, such as artistic inspiration/intuition and personal expression.
• Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), important philosopher within the fascist movement. Ghostwrote the first portion of "The Doctrine of Fascism".
• Alexandre Kojève (1902–1968), gave rise to a new understanding of Hegel in France during the 1930s. His lectures were attended by a small but influential group of intellectuals including Raymond Queneau, Georges Bataille, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, André Breton, Jacques Lacan, Raymond Aron, Roger Caillois, Michel Leiris, Henry Corbin, and Jean Hyppolite, and influenced Jean-Paul Sartre.

Criticisms

Exponents of analytic philosophy, which has been the dominant form of Anglo-American philosophy for most of the last century, have criticised Hegel's work as hopelessly obscure. Existentialists also criticise Hegel for ultimately choosing an essentialistic whole over the particularity of existence. Epistemologically, one of the main problems plaguing Hegel's system is how these thought determinations have bearing on reality as such. A perennial problem of his metaphysics seems to be the question of how spirit externalises itself and how the concepts it generates can say anything true about nature. At the same time, they will have to, because otherwise Hegel's system concepts would say nothing about something that is not itself a concept and the system would come down to being only an intricate game involving vacuous concepts.

Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer noted that Hegel created his absolute idealism after Kant had discredited all proofs of God's existence. The Absolute is a non-personal substitute for the concept of God. It is the one subject that perceives the universe as one object. Individuals share in parts of this perception. Since the universe exists as an idea in the mind of the Absolute, absolute idealism copies Spinoza's pantheism in which everything is in God or Nature.

Moore and Russell

Famously, G. E. Moore’s rebellion against absolutism found expression in his defense of common sense against the radically counter-intuitive conclusions of absolutism (e.g. time is unreal, change is unreal, separateness is unreal, imperfection is unreal, etc.). G. E. Moore also pioneered the use of logical analysis against the absolutists, which Bertrand Russell promulgated and used in order to begin the entire tradition of analytic philosophy with its use against the philosophies of his direct predecessors. In recounting his own mental development Russell reports, "For some years after throwing over [absolutism] I had an optimistic riot of opposite beliefs. I thought that whatever Hegel had denied must be true." (Russell in Barrett and Adkins 1962, p. 477) Also:

G.E. Moore took the lead in the rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation. [Absolutism] argued that everything common sense believes in is mere appearance. We reverted to the opposite extreme, and thought that everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy or theology, supposes real.

— Bertrand Russell; as quoted in Klemke 2000, p.28

Pragmatism

Particularly the works of William James and F. C. S. Schiller, both founding members of pragmatism, made lifelong assaults on Absolute Idealism. James was particularly concerned with the monism that Absolute Idealism engenders, and the consequences this has for the problem of evil, free will, and moral action. Schiller, on the other hand, attacked Absolute Idealism for being too disconnected with our practical lives, and argued that its proponents failed to realize that thought is merely a tool for action rather than for making discoveries about an abstract world that fails to have any impact on us.

20th century

Absolute idealism has greatly altered the philosophical landscape. Paradoxically, (though, from a Hegelian point of view, maybe not paradoxically at all) this influence is mostly felt in the strong opposition it engendered. Both logical positivism and Analytic philosophy grew out of a rebellion against Hegelianism prevalent in England during the 19th century. Continental phenomenology, existentialism and post-modernism also seek to 'free themselves from Hegel's thought'.

Martin Heidegger, one of the leading figures of Continental philosophy in the 20th century, sought to distance himself from Hegel's work. One of Heidegger's philosophical themes in Being and Time was "overcoming metaphysics," aiming to distinguish his book from Hegelian tracts. After the 1927 publication, Heidegger's "early dismissal of them [German idealists] gives way to ever-mounting respect and critical engagement." He continued to compare and contrast his philosophy with Absolute idealism, principally due to critical comments that certain elements of this school of thought anticipated Heideggerian notions of "overcoming metaphysics."

Quietism (philosophy)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philosophical quietists want to release humanity from deep perplexity that philosophical contemplation often causes.

Quietism in philosophy sees the role of philosophy as broadly therapeutic or remedial. Quietist philosophers believe that philosophy has no positive thesis to contribute, but rather that its value is in defusing confusions in the linguistic and conceptual frameworks of other subjects, including non-quietist philosophy. For quietists, advancing knowledge or settling debates (particularly those between realists and non-realists) is not the job of philosophy, rather philosophy should liberate the mind by diagnosing confusing concepts.

Status within philosophy

Crispin Wright said that "Quietism is the view that significant metaphysical debate is impossible." It has been described as "the view or stance that entails avoidance of substantive philosophical theorizing and is usually associated with certain forms of skepticism, pragmatism, and minimalism about truth. More particularly, it is opposed to putting forth positive theses and developing constructive arguments."

Quietism by its nature is not a philosophical school as understood in the sense of a systematic body of truths. The objective of quietism is to show that philosophical positions or theories cannot solve problems, settle debates or advance knowledge.

It is often raised in discussion as an opposite position to both philosophical realism and anti-realism. Specifically, quietists deny that there is any substantial debate between the positions of realism and non-realism. There are a range of justifications for quietism about the realism debate offered by Gideon Rosen and John McDowell.

History and proponents

Ancient

Pyrrhonism represents perhaps the earliest example of an identifiably quietist position in the West. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus described Pyrrhonism as a form of philosophical therapy:

The causal principle of scepticism we say is the hope of attaining ataraxia (being unperturbed). Men of talent, troubled by the anomaly in things and puzzled as to which of them they should rather assent to, came to investigate what in things is true and what false, thinking that by deciding these issues they would attain ataraxia. The chief constitutive principle of scepticism is the claim that to every account an equal account is opposed; for it is from this, we think, that we come to hold no beliefs.

— Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, Chapter 12

Some have identified Epicureans as another early proponent of quietism. The goal of Epicurean philosophy is the decidedly quietist objectives of aponia (freedom from pain) and ataraxia, even dismissing Stoic logic as useless.

The neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng Hao is also associated with advocating quietism. He argued that the goal of existence should be calming one's natural biases and embracing impartial tranquility. This aversion to bias is nevertheless quite distinct from Wittgenstein's position.

Contemporary

Contemporary discussion of quietism can be traced back to Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work greatly influenced the ordinary language philosophers. While Wittgenstein himself did not advocate quietism, he expressed sympathy with the viewpoint. One of the early 'ordinary language' works, Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind, attempted to demonstrate that dualism arises from a failure to appreciate that mental vocabulary and physical vocabulary are simply different ways of describing one and the same thing, namely human behaviour. J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia took a similar approach to the problems of skepticism and the reliability of sense perception, arguing that they arise only by misconstruing ordinary language, not because there is anything genuinely wrong with empirical evidence. Norman Malcolm, a friend of Wittgenstein's, took a quietist approach to skeptical problems in the philosophy of mind.

More recently, the philosophers John McDowell, Irad Kimhi, Sabina Lovibond, Eric Marcus, Gideon Rosen, and to a certain degree Richard Rorty have taken explicitly quietist positions. Pete Mandik has argued for a position of qualia quietism on the hard problem of consciousness.

Varieties

Some philosophers have advanced quietism about specific subjects such as realism or truth. These positions can be held independent of one's view on quietism about the entire project of philosophy.

On realism

One may be a realist about a range of subjects within philosophy from ethics and aesthetics to science and mathematics. Realists claim that a given concept exists, has particular properties and is in some way mind independent, while non-realists deny this claim. Quietists take a third position, claiming that there is no real debate between realists and non-realists on a given subject. A version of this position espoused by John McDowell claims that the debate hinges on theses about the relationship between the mind and the world around us that are unsupported or unsupportable, and without those claims there will be no debate. Others, such as Gideon Rosen argue more specifically against individual cases of the realism debate.

On truth

Quietism about truth is a version of the identity theory of truth. Specifically, Jennifer Hornsby and John McDowell argue against any ontological gap between what we think is true and what is actually true. Quietists about truth resist the distinction between truth bearers and truthmakers as leading to a correspondence theory of truth. Rather they claim that such a distinction should be eliminated, true statements are simply one thinking truly about the world. The target of these thoughts is not a truthbearer, but rather the facts of the world themselves.

Pyrrhonism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pyrrhonism is an Ancient Greek school of philosophical skepticism which rejects dogma and advocates the suspension of judgement over the truth of all beliefs. It was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE, and said to have been inspired by the teachings of Pyrrho and Timon of Phlius in the fourth century BCE. Pyrrhonism is best known today through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE. The publication of Sextus' works in the Renaissance ignited a revival of interest in Skepticism and played a major role in Reformation thought and the development of early modern philosophy.

History

Pyrrhonism is named after Pyrrho of Elis, a Greek philosopher in the 4th century BCE who was credited by the later Pyrrhonists with forming the first comprehensive school of skeptical thought. However, ancient testimony about the philosophical beliefs of the historical Pyrrho is minimal, and often contradictory: his teachings were recorded by his student Timon of Phlius, but those works have been lost, and only survive in fragments quoted by later authors, and based on testimonies of later authors such as Cicero, Pyrrho's own philosophy as recorded by Timon may have been much more dogmatic than that of the later school who bore his name. While Pyrrhonism would become the dominant form of skepticism in the early Roman period, in the Hellenistic period, the Platonic Academy was the primary advocate of skepticism until the mid-first century BCE, when Pyrrhonism as a philosophical school was founded by Aenesidemus.

Philosophy

As with other Hellenistic philosophies such as Stoicism, Peripateticism and Epicureanism, eudaimonia is the goal of Pyrrhonism. As with Epicureanism, Pyrrhonism places the attainment of ataraxia (a state of equanimity) as the way to achieve eudaimonia. Pyrrhonists dispute that the dogmatists – which includes all of Pyrrhonism's rival philosophies – claim to have found truth regarding non-evident matters, and that these opinions about non-evident matters (i.e., dogma) are what prevent one from attaining eudaimonia. For any of these dogma, a Pyrrhonist makes arguments for and against such that the matter cannot be concluded, thus suspending judgement, and thereby inducing ataraxia.

Pyrrhonists can be subdivided into those who are ephectic (engaged in suspension of judgment), aporetic (engaged in refutation) or zetetic (engaged in seeking). An ephectic merely suspends judgment on a matter, "balancing perceptions and thoughts against one another," It is a less aggressive form of skepticism, in that sometimes "suspension of judgment evidently just happens to the sceptic". An aporetic skeptic, in contrast, works more actively towards their goal, engaging in the refutation of arguments in favor of various possible beliefs in order to reach aporia, an impasse, or state of perplexity, which leads to suspension of judgement. Finally, the zetetic claims to be continually searching for the truth but to have thus far been unable to find it, and thus continues to suspend belief while also searching for reason to cease the suspension of belief.

Modes

Although Pyrrhonism's objective is ataraxia, it is best known for its epistemological arguments. The core practice is through setting argument against argument. To aid in this, the Pyrrhonist philosophers Aenesidemus and Agrippa developed sets of stock arguments known as "modes" or "tropes."

The ten modes of Aenesidemus

Aenesidemus is considered the creator of the ten tropes of Aenesidemus (also known as the ten modes of Aenesidemus)—although whether he invented the tropes or just systematized them from prior Pyrrhonist works is unknown. The tropes represent reasons for suspension of judgment. These are as follows:

1. Different animals manifest different modes of perception;
2. Similar differences are seen among individual men;
3. For the same man, information perceived with the senses is self-contradictory
4. Furthermore, it varies from time to time with physical changes
5. In addition, this data differs according to local relations
6. Objects are known only indirectly through the medium of air, moisture, etc.
7. These objects are in a condition of perpetual change in colour, temperature, size and motion
8. All perceptions are relative and interact one upon another
9. Our impressions become less critical through repetition and custom
10. All men are brought up with different beliefs, under different laws and social conditions

According to Sextus, superordinate to these ten modes stand three other modes: that based on the subject who judges (modes 1, 2, 3 & 4), that based on the object judged (modes 7 & 10), that based on both subject who judges and object judged (modes 5, 6, 8 & 9), and superordinate to these three modes is the mode of relation.

The five modes of Agrippa

These "tropes" or "modes" are given by Sextus Empiricus in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism. According to Sextus, they are attributed only "to the more recent skeptics" and it is by Diogenes Laërtius that we attribute them to Agrippa. The five tropes of Agrippa are:

1. Dissent – The uncertainty demonstrated by the differences of opinions among philosophers and people in general.
2. Infinite regress – All proof rests on matters themselves in need of proof, and so on to infinity.
3. Relation – All things are changed as their relations become changed, or, as we look upon them from different points of view.
4. Assumption – The truth asserted is based on an unsupported assumption.
5. Circularity – The truth asserted involves a circularity of proofs.

According to the mode deriving from dispute, we find that undecidable dissension about the matter proposed has come about both in ordinary life and among philosophers. Because of this we are not able to choose or to rule out anything, and we end up with suspension of judgement. In the mode deriving from infinite regress, we say that what is brought forward as a source of conviction for the matter proposed itself needs another such source, which itself needs another, and so ad infinitum, so that we have no point from which to begin to establish anything, and suspension of judgement follows. In the mode deriving from relativity, as we said above, the existing object appears to be such-and-such relative to the subject judging and to the things observed together with it, but we suspend judgement on what it is like in its nature. We have the mode from hypothesis when the Dogmatists, being thrown back ad infinitum, begin from something which they do not establish but claim to assume simply and without proof in virtue of a concession. The reciprocal mode occurs when what ought to be confirmatory of the object under investigation needs to be made convincing by the object under investigation; then, being unable to take either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both.

With reference to these five tropes, that the first and third are a short summary of the earlier Ten Modes of Aenesidemus. The three additional ones show a progress in the Pyrrhonist system, building upon the objections derived from the fallibility of sense and opinion to more abstract and metaphysical grounds. According to Victor Brochard "the five tropes can be regarded as the most radical and most precise formulation of skepticism that has ever been given. In a sense, they are still irresistible today."

Criteria of action

Pyrrhonist decision making is made according to what the Pyrrhonists describe as the criteria of action holding to the appearances, without beliefs in accord with the ordinary regimen of life based on:

1. the guidance of nature, by which we are naturally capable of sensation and thought
2. the compulsion of the passions by which hunger drives us to food and thirst makes us drink
3. the handing down of customs and laws by which we accept that piety in the conduct of life is good and impiety bad
4. instruction in techne

Skeptic sayings

The Pyrrhonists devised several sayings (Greek ΦΩΝΩΝ) to help practitioners bring their minds to suspend judgment. Among these are:

• Not more, nothing more (a saying attributed to Democritus)
• Non-assertion (aphasia)
• Perhaps, it is possible, maybe
• I withhold assent
• I determine nothing (Montaigne created a variant of this as his own personal motto, "Que sais-je?" – "what do I know?")
• Everything is indeterminate
• Everything is non-apprehensible
• I do not apprehend
• To every argument an equal argument is opposed

Texts

Except for the works of Sextus Empiricus, the texts of ancient Pyrrhonism have been lost. There is a summary of the Pyrrhonian Discourses by Aenesidemus, preserved by Photius, and a brief summary of Pyrrho's teaching by Aristocles, quoting Pyrrho's student Timon preserved by Eusebius:

'The things themselves are equally indifferent, and unstable, and indeterminate, and therefore neither our senses nor our opinions are either true or false. For this reason then we must not trust them, but be without opinions, and without bias, and without wavering, saying of every single thing that it no more is than is not, or both is and is not, or neither is nor is not.

Influence

In Ancient Greek philosophy

Skeptics in Raphael's School of Athens painting. Pyrrho is #4 and Timon #5

Pyrrhonism is often contrasted with Academic skepticism, a similar but distinct form of Hellenistic philosophical skepticism. While early Academic skepticism was influenced in part by Pyrrho, it grew more and more dogmatic until Aenesidemus broke with the Academics to revive Pyrrhonism in the first century BCE, denouncing the Academy as "Stoics fighting against Stoics." Some later Pyrrhonists, such as Sextus Empiricus, go so far as to claim that Pyrrhonists are the only real skeptics, dividing all philosophy into the dogmatists, the Academics, and the skeptics. Dogmatists claim to have knowledge, Academic skeptics claim that knowledge is impossible, while Pyrrhonists assent to neither proposition, suspending judgment on both. The second century Roman historian Aulus Gellius describes the distinction as "...the Academics apprehend (in some sense) the very fact that nothing can be apprehended, and they determine (in some sense) that nothing can be determined, whereas the Pyrrhonists assert that not even that seems to be true, since nothing seems to be true.^"

Sextus Empiricus also said that the Pyrrhonist school influenced and had substantial overlap with the Empiric school of medicine, but that Pyrrhonism had more in common with the Methodic school in that it "follow[s] the appearances and take[s] from these whatever seems expedient."

Although Julian the Apostate mentions that Pyrrhonism had died out at the time of his writings, other writers mention the existence of later Pyrrhonists. Pseudo-Clement, writing around the same time (c. 300-320 CE) mentions Pyrrhonists in his Homilies and Agathias even reports a Pyrrhonist named Uranius as late as the middle of the 6th century CE.

Similarities between Pyrrhonism and Indian philosophy

Nagarjuna, a Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher whose skeptical arguments are similar to those preserved in the work of Sextus Empiricus

A number of similarities have been noted between the Pyrrhonist works of Sextus Empiricius and that of Nagarjuna, the Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher from the 2nd or 3rd century CE. Buddhist philosopher Jan Westerhoff says "many of Nāgārjuna's arguments concerning causation bear strong similarities to classical sceptical arguments as presented in the third book of Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism," and Thomas McEvilley suspects that Nagarjuna may have been influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts imported into India. McEvilley argues for mutual iteration in the Buddhist logico-epistemological traditions between Pyrrhonism and Madhyamika:

An extraordinary similarity, that has long been noticed, between Pyrrhonism and Mādhyamika is the formula known in connection with Buddhism as the fourfold negation (Catuṣkoṭi) and which in Pyrrhonic form might be called the fourfold indeterminacy.

McEvilley also notes a correspondence between the Pyrrhonist and Madhyamaka views about truth, comparing Sextus' account of two criteria regarding truth, one which judges between reality and unreality, and another which we use as a guide in everyday life. By the first criteria, nothing is either true or false, but by the second, information from the senses may be considered either true or false for practical purposes. As Edward Conze has noted, this is similar to the Madhyamika Two Truths doctrine, a distinction between "Absolute truth" (paramārthasatya), "the knowledge of the real as it is without any distortion," and "Truth so-called" (saṃvṛti satya), "truth as conventionally believed in common parlance.

Map of Alexander the Great's empire and the route he and Pyrrho took to India

Some scholars have also looked farther back, to determine if any earlier Indian philosophy may have had an influence on Pyrrho. Diogenes Laërtius' biography of Pyrrho reports that Pyrrho traveled with Alexander the Great's army to India and incorporated what he learned from the Gymnosophists and the Magi that he met in his travels into his philosophical system. Pyrrho would have spent about 18 months in Taxila as part of Alexander the Great's court during Alexander's conquest of the east. Christopher I. Beckwith draws comparisons between the Buddhist three marks of existence and the concepts outlined in the "Aristocles Passage".

However, other scholars, such as Stephen Batchelor and Charles Goodman question Beckwith's conclusions about the degree of Buddhist influence on Pyrrho. Conversely, while critical of Beckwith's ideas, Kuzminsky sees credibility in the hypothesis that Pyrrho was influenced by Buddhism, even if it cannot be safely ascertained with our current information.

While discussing Christopher Beckwith's claims in Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia, Jerker Blomqvist states that:

On the other hand, certain elements that are generally regarded as essential features of Buddhism are entirely absent from ancient Pyrrhonism/scepticism. The concepts of good and bad karma must have been an impossibility in the Pyrrhonist universe, if "things" were ἀδιάφορα, 'without a logical self-identity', and, consequently, could not be differentiated from each other by labels such as 'good' and 'bad' or 'just' and 'unjust'. A doctrine of rebirth, reminiscent of the Buddhist one, though favored by Plato and Pythagoras, was totally alien to the Pyrrhonists. The ἀταραξία, 'undisturbedness', that the Pyrrhonists promised their followers, may have a superficial resemblance to the Buddhist nirvana, but ἀταραξία, unlike nirvana, did not involve a liberation from a cycle of reincarnation; rather, it was a mode of life in this world, blessed with μετριοπάθεια, 'moderation of feeling' or 'moderate suffering', not with the absence of any variety of pain. Kuzminski, whom Beckwith hails as a precursor of his, had largely ignored the problem with this disparity between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism.

Ajñana, which upheld radical skepticism, may have been a more powerful influence on Pyrrho than Buddhism. The Buddhists referred to Ajñana's adherents as Amarāvikkhepikas or "eel-wrigglers", due to their refusal to commit to a single doctrine. Scholars including Barua, Jayatilleke, and Flintoff, contend that Pyrrho was influenced by, or at the very least agreed with, Indian skepticism rather than Buddhism or Jainism, based on the fact that he valued ataraxia, which can be translated as "freedom from worry". Jayatilleke, in particular, contends that Pyrrho may have been influenced by the first three schools of Ajñana, since they too valued freedom from worry.

Modern

Balance scales in equal balance are a modern symbol of Pyrrhonism

The recovery and publication of the works of Sextus Empiricus, particularly a widely influential translation by Henri Estienne published in 1562, ignited a revival of interest in Pyrrhonism. Philosophers of the time used his works to source their arguments on how to deal with the religious issues of their day. Major philosophers such as Michel de Montaigne, Marin Mersenne, and Pierre Gassendi later drew on the model of Pyrrhonism outlined in Sextus Empiricus' works for their own arguments. This resurgence of Pyrrhonism has sometimes been called the beginning of modern philosophy. Montaigne adopted the image of a balance scale for his motto, which became a modern symbol of Pyrrhonism. It has also been suggested that Pyrrhonism provided the skeptical underpinnings that René Descartes drew from in developing his influential method of Cartesian doubt and the associated turn of early modern philosophy towards epistemology. In the 18th century, David Hume was also considerably influenced by Pyrrhonism, using "Pyrrhonism" as a synonym for "skepticism.".

Nietzsche was critical of Pyrrhonian ephectics.

Friedrich Nietzsche, however, criticized the "ephetics" of the Pyrrhonists as a flaw of early philosophers, who he characterized as "shy little blunderer[s] and milquetoast[s] with crooked legs" prone to overindulging "his doubting drive, his negating drive, his wait-and-see ('ephectic') drive, his analytical drive, his exploring, searching, venturing drive, his comparing, balancing drive, his will to neutrality and objectivity, his will to every sine ira et studio: have we already grasped that for the longest time they all went against the first demands of morality and conscience?"

Contemporary

Fallibilism is a modern, fundamental perspective of the scientific method, as put forth by Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Peirce, that all knowledge is, at best, an approximation, and that any scientist always must stipulate this in her or his research and findings. It is, in effect, a modernized extension of Pyrrhonism. Indeed, historic Pyrrhonists sometimes are described by modern authors as fallibilists and modern fallibilists sometimes are described as Pyrrhonists.

The term "neo-Pyrrhonism" is used to refer to modern Pyrrhonists such as Benson Mates and Robert Fogelin.