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Letters
Letters to the Editor
Why Unicorns Are Necessary • Apologetic But Defiant • Educational Inquisition • Floppy Souls
Why Unicorns Are Necessary
Dear Editor,
M.E. Fox and A.C.F.A. d’Avalos (‘The Necessity of Moral Realism’, in Issue 6) tell us that “The meaning of the terms [‘moral’ and ‘amoral’] is constituted by the contrast that exists between the categories… they are meaningful if and only if a contrast exists between them and this obviously requires that they both exist”. Now “An empty category is a non-existent category”. Hence “moral issues do actually exist”. Hence moral scepticism is unjustified.
After a little practice, I think I’ve now got the hang of this argument-form, and I am in a position to say that it has some exciting applications outside moral theory. Consider, for example, speculative zoology, where the Fox/d’Avalos technique has established the existence of unicorns.
The argument goes like this. The meaning of the terms ‘unicorn’ and ‘non-unicorn’ is constituted by the contrast that exists between the categories ‘unicorn’ and ‘non-unicorn’. These categories are meaningful if and only if a contrast exists between them and this obviously requires that both categories exist. Now “An empty category is a non-existent category”. But the category ‘unicorn’ is not a non-existent category. Therefore it is not an empty category. But a nonempty category is a category of things such that there are such things. Hence there are such things as unicorns; i.e., unicorns do actually exist. Hence scepticism about unicorns is unjustified.
I’m here to tell you that this result has already caused quite a stir in philomonoceratist circles. A spokesman for the British Unicorn Society was reliably reported last night to be in an ongoing superlunary situation, and further applications of Fox and d’Avalos’ revolutionary logical technique are eagerly awaited by the members of such organisations as the Golden Mountaineers, the ‘Bring Back Tinkerbell’ League, the Gaunilo’s Island Holiday Club, and the British Association for the Reinstatement of the Ontological Proof.
A more sombre note was, however, sounded by the President of the Association for Ethical Naturalism, who commented: “I think Fox and d’Avalos must have gone wrong somewhere if their argument has this consequence. Perhaps it’s their assumption that ‘an empty category is a non-existent category’, or else, maybe, their evident belief that, for there to be a contrast of meaning of the sort they’re interested in, something must actually exist, rather than just possibly exist, on both sides of the contrast.”
“Personally,” he added after a reflective pause, “I thought the best bit of their paper was the bit where they said it was ‘mind-numbingly obvious that whether or not you eat people is a moral issue’. I’m sure that’s true. But if it is true, then why won’t the following do as a complete proof of moral realism? :-
1. If there are any moral issues then moral scepticism is unjustified.
2. It’s mind-numbingly obvious that whether or not you eat people is a moral issue.
3. Therefore it’s mind-numbingly obvious that there is at least one moral issue.
4. Therefore it’s mind-numbingly obvious that moral scepticism is unjustified.”
Best wishes,
Tim Chappell
Merton College, Oxford
Dear Editor,
In their article ‘The Necessity of Moral Realism’ (Issue 6), M.E. Fox and A. d’Avalos seem to suggest that the refutation of a view they call ‘moral scepticism’ automatically establishes the objectivity of ethics. The moral sceptic, they tell us, holds that all moral propositions are false, because “the properties to which..[they]..refer do not exist”. They go on to contend that such a view is mistaken, maintaining (1) that some moral propositions are true, and (2) that if any moral proposition is true, ethics is objective. I do not wish to address the arguments against moral scepticism which lead the authors to assert (1), but rather to point out that (2) is a decidedly suspect claim.
It is dubious because it neglects to take into account any form of ethical subjectivism which holds that moral propositions such as “x is wrong”, are in fact disguised reports of one’s own psychological attitudes. That is, a subjectivist can maintain that the proposition expressed by the sentence “x is wrong”, is something like “I disapprove of x”. This proposition will of course be true just in case the person uttering the sentence does indeed disapprove of x. Understood in this way, the truth of “x is wrong” is quite consistent with its lack of objectivity, and consequently with the statement “x is right”, when it is uttered by some other speaker (or the same speaker at a different time). Thus (2) is false, and the failure of moral scepticism does not, all by itself, entail the objectivity of ethics.
I should make it clear that I have no desire to portray myself as a champion of ethical subjectivism. Like many people, I lean intuitively towards moral objectivism, and eagerly await the discovery of a compelling argument in support of my intuitions. Unfortunately, the argument presented by Messrs. Fox and d’Avalos is not the one I’m looking for.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Kelly
Ballasalla, Isle of Man
Apologetic But Defiant
Dear Sir,
I am writing in reply to the points raised in the various letters which followed my review of What is Philosophy? by Dietrich von Hildebrand (PN4). I am sorry for any offence which the tone of the piece caused, but I feel that its arguments can be sustained.
To deal with the letters in order of appearance, Michael Harman’s letter (PN5) suggests that I might have been unclear, for which I apologise. I had absolutely no intention of denying the verity of mathematics as a true description of absolutely real and obtaining universal relations. I was merely underlining that numbers are proper representations of real ratios, but not real entities in themselves. To take a parallel, no-one would deny the existence of gravity, let alone its availability for scientific study, but one would hesitate to describe it as a ‘thing’. If Michael Harman can show me a number that is a thing in itself, and not a sign (as any written mathematical sign must be), that exists not as a mark on paper but in and of itself, I will concede the entity of numbers – but not until.
Simon Ross Harrison’s letter in the same issue raised several points which I will take in turn. First, in my view Hildebrand’s decision not just to seek Catholic approval for his book but to publish it under the rubric ‘Nihil Obstat’ is in itself a declaration, not just a neutral quirk with no bearing on the case. My Spanish edition of Del sentimiento tragico de la vida, for instance, carries no such legend. Hildebrand was not constrained to do this: that he chose to do so must be considered a meaningful act. If philosophy has a claim to be anything more than a branch of imaginative literature, it must concern itself with demonstrable truth. And to submit oneself to a censor, who can yea- or naysay the work on the basis of its conformity to an already given body of thought is to go against the pursuit of truth. This also covers Ross Harrison’s second point, regarding how a philosopher may use his arguments and what the content of his work should be.
As regards his comments on my conclusions: I would maintain that we cannot consider a work as belonging to a discipline if it denies that discipline’s basic procedures. I quoted Seifert in the review regarding Hildebrand’s idea of what constitutes a proof in philosophy (i.e. an incommunicable inner intuition, whose intensity is the criterion of its truth). How can we even get to quod erat demonstrandum from that basis? From the earliest emergence of anything called philosophy, the discipline was always conducted through public discourse in which proofs were arrived at by rational demonstration. Hildebrand’s thought may be interesting to us in many ways, but if it sets forth that an argument’s logical necessity only has value as the concomitant of a validating inner conviction, then in my view it has strayed outside the confines of philosophy into some other field. Wittgenstein, conversely, demonstrated his arguments in words rather than reserving them for some interior litmus test (and please refer to Philosophical Investigations 66 for Wittgenstein on demonstration). And Bertrand Russell certainly showed no reluctance to admit at least the early Wittgenstein to the ranks of the philosophers: why therefore should we? I cannot speak for my own ‘authority’ on Wittgenstein: surely the best criterion is whether I have understood him or not.
Stratford Caldecott’s letter (PN 6) suggests I might regard the classical philosophical tradition as somehow ‘disproved’. Please be assured that this is not the case. But, by the same token, I do not agree that the tradition ‘depended on acquaintance with another level of consciousness than that of conceptual reason’, to whit ‘Turning inward by a process of contemplation ’. I am not aware that any of the Greeks from the pre-Socratics on had access to a regimen of mystic contemplation comparable to Indian Yoga or the meditation techniques developed independently in China – though I would be glad to be proven wrong. The Oriental meditation techniques to which Caldecott refers share a common opposition to conceptual thought, ideas, and discursive logic of which the Zen koan is only the most extreme example. They tend to work by demolishing the framework of thought so as to return to the ‘uncarved block’ of immediate perception: for the ‘unconditioned reality’ to which they aspire is precisely that which has not been shaped by sensual appetite and articulate reason. Are they then really working the same lode as Plato and Aristotle? As for intelligible forms – what requires me to assume a single essence between all those phenomena I describe as ‘just’ (to use Caldecott’s example)? Is not Wittgenstein’s principle of ‘family resemblance’ a perfectly workable way of accounting for similarities between things without postulating a higher order of reality populated by ontologically superior Forms? Why must I contemplate the intelligible essence of justice in order to perceive its nature, rather than simply knowing about justice or being able to use ‘justice/just’ in a generally acceptable way?
Lastly, I did not dismiss Hildebrand as an attempt to shore up Catholicism: it was precisely his arguments that I attacked. Kierkegaard, Unamuno and countless others thought well within Christianity, and did not violate truth in so doing. However unimpeachable Hildebrand’s public record, we must judge his philosophy by philosophical criteria alone: it is one of the discipline’s most and least attractive aspects that an evil man can advance a true thought, just as a bad man can write a good poem, for in the end the fruits are independent of their creators and stand or fall by themselves.
Yours sincerely,
Paul St John Mackintosh
London NW3
Educational Inquisition
Dear Editor,
I’ve just read the interview with David Pascall (Issue 6): what a brilliant idea! but why wasn’t he more rigorously challenged? Who for instance, is going to educate the educators? And if morality is constantly beleaguered by the contradiction between bourgeois ethics and capitalist practice, where on earth is their didactic vantage point? Further, how can school students later make free choices if they’re already ideologically conditioned? Finally (a) whatever are “moral absolutes”? and (b) are not the family and sexual preferences historically transient?
Yours sincerely,
Geoff Wade
Athens, Greece
Floppy Souls
Dear Sir/Madam,
Following Professor Kainz’s stimulating article on the many varied and ingenious comparisons that can be drawn between angels and computers, I would like to suggest that the theological analogies could be extended to relate floppy disks to human souls.
The essence of the floppy disk, it seems to me, is that it stores experience but in a corruptible form. As we proceed through life, we accumulate data on the disk of the soul and then at the moment of death the disk is ejected from the body and wings its way to the great computer in the sky where it has its final print-out. Those disks that have not been corrupted beyond repair are initialised by the divine operator and made ready for many millions of years of further dataprocessing. The corrupt disks have to be burnt in case a virus should sneak out and create a whole generation of Lucifers.
There are limits to the analogy. A soul is unlikely to spin at the same speed as a standard 3.5, for example. Nevertheless, it does clarify the relationship between the mind, the soul and the body, and shows how the theory of survival in an after-life crosses the frontier between sense and nonsense.
There is much more work to be done on this subject, I am sure. Perhaps if all the seminaries, abbeys, convents, nunneries and departments of theology in the universe could be networked together to pursue the analogy to its ultimate conclusion, then a major breakthrough on the floppy/soul analogy front could be just around the theological corner. The world holds its breath.And hits the delete button.
Yours faithlessly,
Professor Plum
University of Del Monte
p.s. I have awarded myself a professorship because it seems that Philosophy Now will print any tosh whatever if there is an elevated title attached to it. Confidentially, though, my name is Les Reid and I am the Rt. Hon. Lord Chief Justice, Beauty and Truth of the above address, carpets and fittings included.