Folk Philosophy

Folk Philosophy

Is there such a thing as folk philosophy? We have heard of folk physics and folk psychology, but does philosophy have a folk version? Is there a determinate philosophy held by ordinary blokes (and blokettes)? Such a philosophy would have to be common to all (normal) human beings, part of human nature, possibly innately fixed. It would have to be ancient and indeed prehistoric—certainly not a result of formal education. People since antiquity might well share certain beliefs about the world, but would that count as a philosophy? They all believe in space and time, earth and sky, minds and bodies, right and wrong—but do they have a philosophy of these things? It has been supposed that they do: G.E. Moore believed in something called commonsense philosophy and P.F. Strawson believed in “descriptive metaphysics” (i.e., a study of a universal human system of metaphysical beliefs about reality).[1] If there were a folk philosophy in this sense, it would presumably cover the basic areas of academic philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, etc. Theories within academic philosophy could agree or disagree with the philosophy of the folk (“bloke philosophy”), so they could be complacent or revisionary (to use Strawson’s term): you could be a commonsense philosopher, sticking with what you have always believed as a human being, or you could be an anti-commonsense philosopher, out to correct the philosophical mob (“bespoke philosophy”). It would be like folk physics and folk psychology: you might insist that the folk are right about the physical and psychological worlds, or you might accuse them of error in the light of modern science (then you are a revisionary physicist or psychologist). You might applaud the folk bloke or you might condemn him (conceivably you might have a different “feminist” attitude toward folk blokette philosophy). For example, you might hold that the folk believe in naïve realism about perception, accept materialism about ordinary objects, and reject skepticism about our knowledge of the external world. Depending on your academic philosophical views, you would then either congratulate the folk or criticize them. What you would not do is deny that they have a philosophical opinion—an opinion about what is true philosophically. You would suppose that everyone is a philosopher at heart, as everyone is a budding (if fallible) physicist or psychologist at heart. Philosophical views are thus thought to be natural to us, part of being human (unlike other animals).

I think this view is false: the folk don’t philosophize, whether they be ladies or gentlemen. There is no such thing as folk philosophy or commonsense philosophy or “descriptive philosophy”. Thus, there is no such thing as revisionary philosophy (corrective, critical) if that means taking a negative stand against what the folk believe philosophically. There is no such thing as the “metaphysics of the stone age”, right or wrong—or the epistemology or moral philosophy of the stone age. No philosophical theory is either accepted or rejected by the unwashed mob, nor even by the refined aristocracy (kings and queens have no philosophy, unless instructed in it or are unusually academically inclined). The simplest way to see this is to consider animals and children: surely no dog or ape or strapping toddler believes any particular philosophical doctrine; no philosophical proposition enters their bright and breezy little minds. No lively preschooler is a naive realist about perception or a materialist about the external world. Here you might suavely protest my confidence: “But surely, my good man, even beasts and babes believe that objects continue in existence when you are no longer perceiving them—they are instinctual realists” (at this point the protestor looks around the room expecting to see a sea of nods). But this is completely wrongheaded (the nods are few and far between), because that commonsense observation does not demonstrate adherence to a recognizable philosophical theory; for it is quite compatible with Berkeleyan idealism. There is no commitment here to the materialism opposed by the resourceful bishop of Cloyne, or implicit rejection of his idealist alternative (the idea of a table persists in the mind of God). The cited belief is not a philosophical belief; it is neutral between metaphysical theories. Similarly, a belief in human fallibility is not an acceptance of the skeptical philosophy; nor is moral judgement the acceptance of a particular normative philosophical theory (say, utilitarianism or deontology). All that is at a different level—the meta level, we might say. Beasts, babes, and rednecks (I mean no disrespect) don’t dabble in philosophical theories and arguments; they just get on with life. Philosophy is for us nerds.

The point is not that your average tinker or tailor is never a freelance philosopher—he may well be of that turn of mind—but rather that he is not one simply in virtue of being a normal human. Everyone thinks about things that are of interest to professional philosophers (bodies, minds), but that does not imply that everyone thinks philosophically about these things. The folk may even think about things in a way that is relevant to philosophers, but that doesn’t make them philosophers either.  The regular old cove down at the pub is simply not thinking about philosophy as he drinks his pint (or at any other time), any more than untutored stargazers are doing astronomy. Philosophy is not in the human genotype and not in the human environment either; it isn’t part of universal folk cognition. It arises from other sources. Just so, ordinary speakers are not closet scientific linguists consciously equipped with this or that linguistic theory (say, late Chomsky or early Chomsky); there is no folk linguistics (why should there be?). The fact is that the physical environment and the psychological environment present practical challenges to the imperiled member of Homo sapiens, but the “philosophical environment” presents no such challenge; you can live a perfectly healthy life and not give philosophy a second thought (I am talking about survival and reproduction). There are pressing reasons why folk physics and folk psychology exist (also folk chemistry), but they don’t go over to some supposed folk philosophy. No philosophy is “common sense” in the sense philosophers have intended by that phrase. Nor is there such a thing as folk neurophysiology or folk renaissance literature or folk Latin. These are all specialist studies not universal human competences. They aren’t part of general human biology. There is no philosophy instinct shared by all members of the human species: that is, there is no set of philosophical doctrines installed in us by our genes or our environment.

There is no natural ontogeny to philosophy either. Children don’t go through a dualist phase which they grow out of by age 8. They do go through developmental phases in their understanding of the physical world and other minds, but they don’t exhibit a maturational sequence in their grasp of philosophy (ditto astronomy and renaissance literature). So, let’s not overdo the whole mental module thing; some of the human mind is notmodular and not pre-programmed. Maybe in Vulcans philosophy has its own genetically fixed module with a specific set of beliefs built in: but we are not Vulcans. Philosophy arises in us from mysterious human capacities for reflective thought, probably triggered by conceptual snarl-ups and puzzling experiences (dreams, ethical dilemmas), and no doubt from matters of intellectual taste. There is no philosophy gene or philosophical environmental niche. I think people have supposed that there is such a thing as commonsense philosophy, or such a subject as descriptive metaphysics (describing the human conceptual scheme in its philosophical part) because they confuse general principles with philosophical propositions—as with the example of the persistence of unperceived objects. The whole idea of ordinary language philosophy really rests on the myth of commonsense philosophy, the thought being that such a philosophy must have withstood the test of time (or come from the hand of God); but if there is no such thing, then ordinary language contains no philosophical tenets or tendencies. It may furnish data for philosophy but not doctrines. There is no philosophical knowledge embedded in common sense or in ordinary language. Nor, by the same token, is there any philosophical error embedded in it, so no revision of such error is necessary. Ordinary language is all right as it is, philosophically, though it may not be all right ethically or politically or astronomically. Philosophical theories belong to philosophers not regular chaps and chappesses.[2]

[1] See my “Is Descriptive Metaphysics Possible?” for background to this paper.

[2] They may also belong to religions, but again these are not part of commonsense as understood by philosophers (e.g., the belief in immortality). For the record, I don’t think that common sense believes in free will as a philosophical doctrine; it just believes that people are often free to do as they please (they are not confined or in jail or some such). The folk have no view about whether or not this is compatible with determinism or whether there are other viable notions of freedom. Of course, it is quite possible for ordinary non-philosophical people to become philosophers relatively quickly; the intellectual ability was present all along. It is just that there is no philosophical doctrine embedded in what they ordinarily believe. They don’t have philosophical beliefs. Philosophy belongs in the classroom not in the billiard hall (or on the tundra).