How to Study Philosophy

I have two proposals for the curriculum, which I believe would have salutary effects. The first is that philosophy should be studied only after studying a science, or concurrently with studying a science. Oxford has no pure philosophy degree; you have to study it with another subject, generally scientific—economics (also politics), psychology and physiology, mathematics. That is, an education in science is essential to a sound philosophical education. A scientific cast of mind is desirable in a philosopher. As things stand, you can study philosophy with classics at Oxford, but I don’t think this is ideal; science is, or has become, too important to ignore. Philosophers at Oxford who studied philosophy with classics have to spend a good deal of time boning up on science later if they are to be properly educated (Austin used to read a lot of mathematics). If you don’t know a science quite well, you are at a disadvantage. A great many of our most distinguished philosophers have a scientific background, or made every effort to acquire one. I don’t think it matters much what science it is, so long as you are immersed in some kind of scientific study. I also don’t think it’s a good idea to go straight from school into studying philosophy at university, unless you have studied a good amount of science at school, and even then your immersion will not be deep enough. English literature and history are not preparation enough.

The scientists among us will all be vigorously nodding their heads—those philosophers are all ignorant of science! But now I want to urge that they return the favor: they should all study philosophy. That is, they should follow their scientific studies with some serious immersion in philosophy, or concurrently with studying science. Because otherwise scientism will be their fate and folly. They will be intellectually cramped, narrow, prone to dogmatism and worse. I am talking about ideals here; of course, there are practical problems with adding some philosophy to the scientific curriculum. I am engaged in a Platonic enquiry into the ideal form of education. Properly educated people need to know philosophy and science—that is, people who study either should study both. What about the unwashed rest? What about the historians and literature professors? They too, ideally, should have some science and philosophy under their belts, though they need less than their scientific and philosophical colleagues. I myself think that philosophy is a science, and a lot of so-called science is philosophy, so it makes sense to study them together. The current curriculum is far too atomistic and segregated.

Table Tennis Reinvented

I am able to report on the results of changing the service rules. I drew chalk lines on a regular table tennis table, one line twelve inches from the end of the table, the other twenty-four inches. This produced two possible service areas, one smaller than the other. I played with two competent players to test the results. The larger area allowed for topspin serves of reasonable pace, while the smaller area virtually excluded such serves and allowed only backspin serves. Predictably, the latter modified the traditional game more than the former. It meant that the server had a considerably reduced advantage over the receiver; indeed, if anything, it gave the receiver the advantage. The important thing is that it prolonged the rallies, because the server couldn’t any longer determine the outcome of the point. The upshot: the game was more satisfying and varied—but slower. It became more tactical and skillful. You could still hit fast balls, only not in the serve. We also played with the intermediate size service area and found it an improvement over the traditional arrangement: you could still serve fast topspin balls but not as fast. It was the same game as before but with less dependence on the serve; good for more skilled players. It is true that you feel constrained in your service because you can’t unleash what you could before, but the benefits were considerable. What I also liked is that you can vary the game according to taste by switching from one demarcation line to another, so you can play several games on the same table. We also experimented with allowing for two attempts at serve, like regular tennis, instead of the traditional one. This was less satisfactory, but had its charms; we went back to the stricter rule. Other rules on service placement can be stipulated, each having its impact on the game. You can choose as you wish. No need to stick to the traditional configuration.

Causality and Perception

The causal theory of perception states that it is necessary condition of perceiving an object that the object causes the perception of it. The theory is very plausible, given the counterexamples to a theory without such a causal condition. If the object is causally cut off from the sense impression, we get only veridical hallucination not genuine perception—you don’t see the object. But there remains a nagging feeling that the causal theory isn’t quite right; it needs amendment. Let’s consider seeing a clock: the idea is that you can see the clock only if acts causally on your sense organs; if it doesn’t, you can’t. The clock must causally explain your visual impression. But is it true that the clock is the cause—isn’t it the surface of the clock that causes the impression? It reflects light into your eyes not the whole damn clock. And isn’t it really the atomic constituents of the surface that do the causal work not the clock as a whole? Causality is more localized in the clock than comprising the entire clock—yet you see the clock. Suppose the clock is yellow and you see it this way: does the color cause your impression? But colors don’t cause anything, being causally impotent. The physical properties of the surface do the causing: but you see the color. The color doesn’t have to cause the seeing in order to be seen. What about the space surrounding the clock—does it cause you to see it? But space doesn’t cause anything, yet you see space. What if causation is a myth, as has been held? What if there is no causation in the world? Does that mean you don’t (can’t) see anything? Hardly. What if God sets up a pre-established harmony with no causal linkages? Would that render you unable to see anything? That sounds wrong. Causality thus doesn’t seem like a conceptually necessary condition of seeing, merely what happens most of the time in the actual world. We see material objects, but only in a loose sense do we say that they cause sense impressions. Does the Sun cause you to see it? Isn’t it really the light rays emitted by the Sun that cause you to see the Sun? They are what make contact with your eyes, not the Sun itself—it is 93 million miles away. It isn’t really a necessary truth that perception depends on causation between object perceived and percept. We know we can apprehend objects that lack causal powers, such as propositions and numbers; and is it necessary for introspection that the introspected state causes the act of introspection? The concept of seeing isn’t causal. And what kind of causation do we mean? Must it be mechanical causation? But not all causation is mechanical. Could gravity act as the means of perception? If the force of gravity elicited a visual impression, would that act as the needed necessary condition? As far as I know, no such thing ever happens; but is it at least a conceptual possibility? The standard causal theory begins to seem parochial and obscure, not a self-evident conceptual truth. If you had no concept of causation, would you have no concept of perception? If you reject the former, do you thereby reject the latter? Add to this the fact that no one has been able to convert the causal necessary condition into a sufficient condition, so that no causal analysis of the concept of seeing has proved feasible. The concept of seeing is not inherently a causal concept, unlike say the concept of killing or torturing (causing to die, causing extreme pain). What kind of concept it is, is another question, to which I have no answer.[1]

[1] One might attempt a counterfactual analysis to this effect: for an impression to be a case of seeing it is necessary that if the object were not there the impression (probably) wouldn’t be either. But this is pretty pathetic stuff. What about the idea that perception has a demonstrative element, which doesn’t require a causal connection, as in “that clock”?

Skepticism and the Mind-Body Problem

It is sometimes illuminating to compare disparate areas of philosophy in order to find shared patterns, e.g., ethics and mathematics. I will do the same with respect to skepticism and the mind-body problem. These two problems have a similar structure and arise from similar origins, surprising as that may seem. We can start with the role of consciousness in generating the problems, because it is at the heart of both of them. We are accustomed to this idea in the case of the mind-body problem: it is consciousness, in particular, that gives rise to the classic mind-body problem. Consciousness presents itself as remote from the body and brain—as a different kind of phenomenon altogether. It seems separable from the brain, only contingently connected to it, a thing apart. Hence intimations of dualism: dualism is the metaphysical view that consciousness itself encourages us to adopt. We certainly don’t experience consciousness as a brain state—no neural facts rise to the level of conscious awareness. Consciousness is not consciousness of the brain qua material object. Thus, consciousness is problematically related to the brain, not its natural accompaniment (like the skull). The link is opaque, inscrutable, apparently contingent. We can’t infer one from the other: there is an “explanatory gap”. One is not deducible from the other—hence the (apparent) possibility of zombies and disembodied minds. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be less severe, maybe not a philosophical problem at all (we don’t have a mind-body problem for plants, bacteria, and insentient worms). So much, so familiar. But what is not familiar is the role of consciousness in generating skepticism, particularly about the external world. Without consciousness the skeptical problem is scarcely formulable at all, especially in its most intuitive form. For the problem is precisely that our consciousness, as given, fails to entail the world in which we naturally believe: how things consciously seem to us with regard to external reality does not necessarily determine how things actually are. Things could seem a certain way, consciously, but not be that way—there is no entailment, no logical bridge. There is an “epistemological gap”: the relation is apparently contingent from the perspective of lived consciousness. Nothing in (perceptual) consciousness provides a sure route from itself to the reality beyond—thus, the possibility of hallucination, the evil demon, the brain in a vat, the Matrix. We can’t look into our consciousness and see what the external world is really like; it certainly isn’t merely consciousness itself. Consciousness and reality are things apart, contingently connected, logically independent—or so it seems to us. Consciousness gives us an impression of contingency with regard to external reality—that reality might not even be there. It is easy for us to imagine our consciousness existing but without any reality beyond it. Solipsism is a naturally available possibility, given what we know of consciousness: this consciousness could exist without that world. Consciousness advertises itself as autonomous, distinct, separable, compatible with many hypotheses about the world beyond. Skepticism then results from these intimations, because it trades on contingency as between consciousness and the world in which we uncritically believe (take for granted). Are you now seeing the structural similarity I alluded to? Doesn’t it stick out like a sore thumb? In both cases consciousness gives rise to impressions of autonomy, independence, contingency; and it does so distinctively, as part of its specific nature. It seems autonomous, cut off. In both cases it appears too distant from what it should be closely connected to—the brain or the external world. The gap is the problem, and consciousness itself produces the sense of a gap—it insists on it. No consciousness, no gap. Consciousness seems compatible with a variety of types of underlying stuff, not just the familiar brain stuff; and also compatible with a variety of external states of affairs, not just the ones we normally assume. It gives rise to “intuitions of compatibility”.

Clearly, we need to lessen the gap, or close it completely; and historically, that is what has been attempted. The array of options is similar in the two cases. We can bring consciousness closer to the brain, and we can bring it closer to external reality. There are two ways of doing this: make consciousness closer to its assumed correlate, or make the correlate closer to consciousness. You know the drill: behaviorism and physicalism, or idealism and panpsychism, in the case of the mind-body problem; and externalism or phenomenalism in the case of the skeptical problem. Thus: consciousness is more like the brain than we tend to suppose, or the brain is more like consciousness; and the mind is more bound up with the external world than has been supposed, or the world is more mental than people tend to think. Accordingly, we have an array of “solutions” to the two problems, more or less reductive: the mind is really the brain or the brain is really the mind, on the one hand; and the mind is really the external world or the external world is really the mind, on the other. These are gap-closing moves, designed to overcome the apparent autonomy of consciousness, and hence the problems this autonomy creates. There is no dualism of mind and brain, and no dualism of mind and external world. Alternatively, it might be suggested that elimination is the way to go: no mind, or no brain; and no mind, or no external world. If there is no such thing as mind, there is no problem about its relation to the brain; and if there is no such thing as knowledge, there is nothing that fails to connect logically to external reality. Likewise, if we get rid of brains and material objects, by embracing idealism, we don’t have to worry about relating the mental to the material. Or we might take a less arduous route: declare miracles and the futility of seeking explanations—God is the supernatural fulcrum in which it all turns. He sets up a pre-established harmony between mind and brain, and he ensures that our beliefs never stray far from the truth. There is nothing further to be said: the needed necessities are God-given and brute. God is no deceiver and he has installed the miraculous pineal gland to connect mind and body—end of story.

My point is that the two problems are strikingly similar; I am not out to endorse any of the solutions just outlined (I would reject them all). But let me try to drive the point home by describing a couple of far-out thought experiments; then I will suggest a possible solution applicable to both cases (this is where things get sticky). First, consider a conscious being whose knowledge of the external world is limited to his own brain: he knows about this material object but no other (don’t ask me how this came about). Then, the domain of this being’s knowledge is confined to the basis of his own mental states: his problematic relations concern the same entity. His knowledge of his brain is subject to skepticism, and his mind is subject to the usual mind-body problem. He is problematically related in two ways to the same thing, viz. his brain. The two problems coincide extensionally. Maybe what solves one might solve the other, or provide clues to a solution? He has two sorts of mind-brain problem, in effect. Now let’s get even more wildly counterfactual: suppose there is a conscious being whose brain encompasses all of the reality he knows about—it is enormously extended in space. His brain extends way beyond his head, taking in all that he knows (and maybe more). Then, the skeptical problem coincides with the mind-body problem for this being: he doesn’t really have knowledge of the world beyond his consciousness, and there is the problem of explaining the relation between his mind and his (enormous) brain. The two relations, epistemological and ontological, coincide extensionally. The problems thus overlap, despite being distinct problems. Wouldn’t we then expect to find some overlap in their solution? The same kind of solution applies to both cases, the problems being so similar. But what is that solution?

I made a point of saying that consciousness presents itself as autonomous, but it doesn’t follow that it isautonomous. Impressions (“intuitions”) of autonomy might be illusions of autonomy. This is a familiar line of thought for the mind-body relation: it might seem contingent but not really be so. The reason for this could be that the grounds of the underlying necessity are opaque to us. I won’t go into the details of this proposal here; what I want to suggest is that something similar might hold in the skepticism case. This is not an easy question, partly because we are not entirely clear what knowledge requires in the way of justification. Let me make the initial observation that it is unlikely that millions of years of evolution would leave it entirely accidental that experience matches reality. It may seem to us that our consciousness could have sprung into existence yesterday, but in reality it is the result of countless interactions with the environment stretching back millions of years. It is conditioned and shaped by this long history of involvement in the physical world—the body and the world beyond. This body and brain couldn’t exist without that evolutionary background, and neither could the associated mind. The causal history of both is integral to their identity, which is not to say that it is written into the surface of things. Consciousness couldn’t be what it is without this causal-explanatory relation to external reality. So, it is possible that facts about this history underpin a necessary relation to external reality sufficient to ground knowledge; for all we know, knowledge might be more grounded than we suppose. When we think we are imagining our consciousness without the corresponding reality, we might be under an illusion—this is simply not (metaphysically) possible. But we don’t see why this is so. In other words, knowledge might be a mystery: we just don’t know what grounds knowledge, and hence refutes the skeptic. Likewise, we don’t know what refutes the dualist; we just know that dualism has to be false (dualism in the sense that the mind could exist without the body and brain). That is, we can go mysterian about knowledge. We have already gone mysterian about the mind in relation to the brain; let’s also go mysterian about knowledge in relation to external reality. Thus, we deal with the skeptical problem as we dealt with the mind-body problem, which is what we might expect given their structural similarity. Both problems arise from consciousness-as-we-apprehend-it, so the solution to both might have the same form. Or perhaps I shouldn’t say “solution”; rather, the answer to both problems is that we labor under deep ignorance of what makes consciousness realized in the brain and also directed towards objective reality. It is in the brain and it does enable us to know the external world, but how this is so we don’t comprehend. We fail to appreciate this because consciousness gives us the strong impression that it is autonomous and hence separable from the brain and from the external world. It invitesdualism and skepticism, but we can decline the invitation, preferring instead to acknowledge ignorance. We have “inadequate ideas” about consciousness, so we are tempted by dualism and skepticism—both resulting from impressions of autonomy. But really, objectively, consciousness cannot float free of the brain or become detached from the world that formed it. Both problems arise because consciousness isn’t self-revealing; it doesn’t display its real nature—its place in nature. It seems to stand apart from nature, but it can’t really do that. The image I have is that consciousness is just another node in a tight web of interconnected natural facts; it can’t be plucked out of this web, any more than any other natural object can. The web includes the brain and the external world, to which consciousness is inextricably linked. It is thus some kind of necessary truth that consciousness exists in the brain and indicates external reality more or less correctly. Solipsism cannot be true, even though it seems metaphysically possible. Thus, radical skepticism is false and so is extreme dualism: both assume detachments that are not naturally possible. It is as if the mind is the brain and knowledge is the world, though these formulations are obscure at best (literally false at worst). Maybe we need a new “is”. My knowledge is not really separable from what it is knowledge of, as my mind is not really separable from my brain. My mind reaches out to the world as it reaches out to my brain, though I have no clear conception of what this involves. My mind isn’t over here while my brain and external reality are over there. They cannot be pulled apart. But my consciousness gives me the distinct impression that it stands aloof and apart from everything else. It makes me think I live in a double world, whereas in fact I live in a single interconnected world. The answer to both problems is that consciousness is not as autonomous as it seems.[1]

[1] I could have written many footnotes to this paper, hedging, qualifying, diluting, but I decided not to. It needs to be stated as baldly as possible. You need the big picture, sharply outlined, not footling footnotes. Think of it as having virtual footnotes.