Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (41 page)

We saw in Chapter 6 how logic prizes consistency above all else.
There has to be a way in which our beliefs can be true. In practical
life, the equivalent virtue is that there has to be a way in which our
values could all be implemented. A system of law is inconsistent if
it is impossible to obey its constraints (suppose, for example, that
it forbids the consumption of alcohol on Sunday but also mandates attendance at mass, which has to include wine). Now life
throws up plenty of cases where there is an apparent inconsistency
between simple values. Always tell the truth; never hurt anyone.
But on this occasion the truth is hurtful. Always respect property;
never put the State in danger. But on this occasion protecting the
State requires requisitioning someone's property. So a great deal of
practical thinking consists in adjusting the simple obligations and boundaries that we are apt to require of each other, to accommodate clashes and complexities, and to get some sense of which adjustments best work towards a comprehensive and consistent system of
living. This is not an easy process, and the results tend to be tentative and provisional and hostage to new cases and problems.

Fortunately we have devices to help us. One is history, thought
of in terms of the survival of the fittest. The adjustments and solutions embodied in our inherited form of life have this much going
for them, that they have survived some test of time. We have to be
careful of the kind of conservative worship of inherited forms that
is associated with thinkers like Edmund Burke (1729-97). But it is
much less intelligent to lurch to the other extreme, and believe that
the test of time shows nothing. At the very least it gives us a datum
point from which to think about change. Another device to help us
is imagination. We do not have to wait for crises to come along,
when fiction and imagination and the sheer resolution to think
through our values and their relative importance can be had more
or less for free. And this thinking can occur when we have a relatively objective view of our situation-we can see ourselves as
others see us-when in the heat of passion or action this is much
harder to achieve. With this kind of reflection, we can learn some
understanding of our ideologies and our disguises.

RELATIVISM

So at the end of the day is it `just us'? Do all our vaunted moral
imperatives and values come down to a contingent, situated, perhaps variable set of concerns, that we happen to exact from one
another?

Well, it is indeed us, but it may not be `just' us.'I'he'just' insinuates that other solutions are equally good, orequaIly`valid'or valuable. In particular cases we may well come to think this. The British
drive on the left and Americans on the right. Each has hit upon an
equally good solution to the essential problem of coordinating
traffic. Drivingon the one side is`just us'. But it is not just us that we
do drive exclusively on the one or the other. Driving at random or
in the middle is not an equally good solution-it is no solution at
all-to the problem of coordination.

Once we see a solution as one of many equally good solutions to
some problem, we can appreciate that it is `just ours'. And we are no
longer minded to moralize against the others. Different languages
have different words for different things, and different grammars
and word orders, but so far as that goes they may all serve the purposes of communication equally well. Different customs, rites, observances, social arrangements of all kinds can be seen as different
solutions to problems of public expression, coordination, and
communication. We do not have to rank them. When in Rome, do
as the Romans do.

But suppose a society solves its problems in ways that do grate
upon our concerns. Suppose, like the Taliban in contemporary
Afghanistan, they deny education to women. Or suppose the ages
have bequeathed them a caste system that denies equal opportunities of health, education, or even sustenance to whole classes of
people, according to their birth. Or even that the ages have bequeathed them a system in which some people are owned body and soul by others. These systems are some kind of solution to
problems of how to live. But we do not have to see them as equally
good (`just different') or even as tolerable at all. We can properly
see them as trespassing against boundaries that matter to us. They
offend against boundaries of concern and respect that we believe
ought to be protected. Here it is natural to look to the language of
`rights, meaning not only that it is good or nice of people to show
concern and respect, but that if they do not, the injured parties may
rightly feel resentment and call upon the world to rectify their state.

In saying these things, we voice our own sympathies and concerns and values. But that is what practical reasoning is bound to
be. There is no reason to feel guilty about it, as if it would only be
with a certificate from God, or from the Normative Truth (what
Plato called the Forms) that we have any right to hold our opinions. Our ethical concerns are well seen on the model of Neurath's
boat (Chapter 0. We must inspect each part, and we have to do so
while relying on other parts. But the result of that inspection may,
if we are coherent and imaginative, be perfectly seaworthy. And if,
relying upon it, we find ourselves in conflict with other boats sailing in different directions, there is no reason to lament that we are
not seated in some kind of dry dock, certified by Reason or God.
They are not in any such place, either.

FAREWELL

This book has tried to introduce some of the great themes, and the
things to think about them, and the things other people have thought about them. I have not tried to coerce people into one set
of doctrines or views. In fact, the sensitive reader may have noticed
that the upshot of the arguments is often a kind of pessimism. The
harmony between our thoughts and the world, the bridge we build
between past and future, the sense of what the physical world contains and how our minds fit into it, are all topics on which the finest
thinkers have hurled themselves, only to be frustrated. There always seem to be better words, if only we could find them, just over
the horizon.

It would be possible to be cynical about this-professional
philosophers have been known to be so-as if the defence of critical reflection I tried to give in the Introduction had been shown to
be hollow. I do not think that would be justified. I believe the
process of understanding the problems is itself a good. If the upshot is what Hume called a'mitigated scepticism' or sense of how
much a decent modesty becomes us in our intellectual speculations, that is surely no bad thing. The world is full of ideas, and a
becoming sense of their power, their difficulty, their frailties, and
their fallibility cannot be the least of the things it needs.

18 `prudent never to trust'. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, p. 12.

19 `I will suppose therefore'. Ibid. p. 15.

19 `Does it now follow that I'. Ibid. p.16.

20 `Thinking? At last I have discovered it'. Ibid. p. 18.

21 '[T]he residual taste is eliminated'. Ibid. P. 20.

21 '1 now know that even bodies'. Ibid. P. 22.

26 Brains in vats. This thought-experiment is due to Hilary Putnam,
Reason, Truth and History, ch. 1.

30 Lichtenberg is quoted in J. P. Stern, Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of
Scattered Occasions, p. 270.

34 The trademark argument occurs in Descartes, Meditation 3, pp.
31-3.

36 `[W]e can touch'. This is from a letter to Marin Mersenne,
referenced at Meditations, p. 32, footnote.

38 Arnauld's objection is in the Fourth Set of Objections and Replies,
in Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, p. 142.

40 `There is a species'. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XII, P. 149.

44 'We are like sailors' Neurath's image is presented in his AntiSpengler.

46 Russell's example of scepticism about time occurs in An Outline of
Philosophy, pp. 171-2.

46 The issue of probability and entropy is discussed in Huw Price,
Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point, ch. 2.

5o For Descartes on the nervous system, see especially the sixth
Meditation, pp. 59-60.

51 `ghost in a machine'. Ryle used this phrase in his Concept of Mind.
It ought to be said that Descartes himself denied that on his
account the soul was lodged in the body'like a pilot in a ship', so
there is a scholarly issue of whether he was reaching for a more
sophisticated view.

54 `And how can I generalize'. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 293, p. I00.

58 `Let us suppose at present. Locke, Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, ll. viii. 13, p.136. Here and elsewhere when quoting
Locke I have modernized capitalization.

60 `Now, when certain particles'. Leibniz, New Essays on Human
Understanding, 131.

64 `For unthinking particles of matter'. Locke, Essay, IV. x.16, p. 627.

65 A good source for the current cautious revival of techniques of
analysis is Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics.

74 `Always get rid of the idea: Wittgenstein, Investigations, Pt 11. xi, p. 207.

75 The best source for recent colour science is C. L. Hardin, Color for
Philosophers.

81 `Again, if movement'. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (Of the Nature
of Things), Bk. II, 11. 251-7, p. 43.

86 `Let us imagine. Schopenhauer, On the Freedom of the Will, p. 43.

97 `freedom of clockwork'. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, pp.
99-101.

ioi For Spinoza, see Ethics, Pt. IV, p. 187; Pt. V, pp.199-224.

102 For Aristotle, see Nicomachean Ethics, 111. 5 (1114a4).

107 Strawson's point was made in his celebrated essay, `Freedom and
Resentment'.

11o The Sufi story is adapted from Shah, Tales of the Dervishes.

118 `It is humiliating'. Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. n.

122 `For my part, when: Hume, Treatise, 1. iv. 6, p. 252.

123 `A part of a person' Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man,
p. 202.

125 `That being then one plant'. Locke, Essay, II. xxvii. 4, p. 331.

128 `But the question is'. Locke, Essay, ll. xxvii. 12, p. 337.

129 'An elastic ball'. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 364, p. 342.

131 'Suppose a brave officer'. Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of
Mart, p. 213.

132 'But yet possibly'. Locke, Essay, ll. xxvii. 20, p. 342.

137 'We feel then that in the cases'. Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, p. 69.

14o Kant's great move. The central passages in the Critique of Pure
Reason are in the section entitled 'Transcendental Deduction of
the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, B 130-B 170.

148 Kant. See preceding note.

154 `But when this same fool'. Anselm, Proslogion, pp. 99-too.

159 'Whatever exists must have: Hume, l )ialogues, Pt. 9, p. 54.

161 'It is pretended that'. Ibid. Pt. 9, p. 55-