Curt Ducasse, Philosophy as a Science, 1941

CHAPTER TWO

Philosophy as Logically Articulated Faith




IN THE preceding chapter, we considered the contention that philosophy has the same subject matter as science, but seeks not merely partial but all-inclusive generalizations concerning it. The positive ground upon which disagreement with that contention was based was that although it is temptingly plausible, nevertheless the difference between philosophy and science is really not of this kind, but is a difference in the nature of the facts that each investigates, i.e., a difference of subject matter.

I. Is there a Philosophical Method Distinct from the Scientific? -- The synoptic views or world-interpretations that philosophers have formulated indeed represent attempted generalizations, but concerning philosophy's own subject matter -- generalizations, that is, not continuous with and different only in degree from those of science, but rather concerned with facts quite other than those which the natural or the formal sciences study.

Notwithstanding this, the contrast earlier mentioned between the evident progress of science and the apparent lack of comparable progress in philosophy remains glaring. It has led various writers to urge upon philosophy the need of becoming scientific in method; and this has focused interest on the question whether, since philosophy and science do address themselves to different problems, the methods of science are at all appropriate to philosophy. Is it not perhaps the case that progress in philosophy means something different from progress in science -- that, in its own direction, philosophy has equally progressed, and that it has a method of its own as appropriate to its problems as scientific method is to those of the sciences? We shall in this chapter consider a recent attempt to vindicate philosophy along the lines suggested by this question.

2. Hoernlé's View of the Nature of Philosophy. -- In an essay on "The Philosopher's Quest"{1} Hoernlé, after reviewing the criticisms to which philosophy has lately been subjected, asks what a philosopher can do to reassure himself concerning the nature and value of philosophy. He suggests that the answer must be found in advertence to the nature and value not so much of philosophy as of the spontaneous activity called philosophizing.

The essential spirit of that activity, he tells us, is "the spirit of wholeness": to philosophize "is to seek an attitude towards the universe as a whole." However, since the whole universe cannot be presented to our thought, "wholeness is not to be understood quantitatively, but qualitatively. It consists, at the very least, in that quality of organization in virtue of which alone we can say that we experience a 'universe,' or live in a 'world.' Order, correlation of differences, system, are aspects of it, or forms of it." Our experiences, that is to say, exhibit some order and connection, and more of this may be discovered in them by reflection. That orderliness and connectedness are a character of the universe is a lesson that experience itself can teach us; and "to philosophize is nothing but the sustained attempt to elicit this lesson." Objects and experiences are thus the data or materials for philosophizing, which itself is rather "the effort at synthesis, or synopsis, which acknowledges at bottom but one 'object -- call it, as we will, reality, God, the absolute, the universe, the whole." And the "stability in thought and feeling and action" that perception of the wholeness of the universe brings constitutes wisdom, which is the goal of philosophizing.

3. Is Philosophizing Only Wishful Thinking? -- The objection that philosophizing is then only a species of wishful thinking immediately suggests itself, and is stated by Hoernlé himself with great clarity as a preliminary to the attempt he makes to dispose of it. The objection, as he phrases it, is that wholeness is predicable "not of the universe as a fact, but only of the philosopher's point of view as an aspiration; that it means wholeness of attitude rather than attitude towards a whole; that it is subjective and psychological, not objective and metaphysical; an intellectual demand or ideal, not an actual, or at least not a verifiable, character of the nature of things." For the universe, "as it comes to us in experience . . . . is sufficiently chaotic to stamp the suggestion of its all pervading orderliness as, at best, an hypothesis . . . . for thought and conduct, not an objective truth," or else as "an escape from intolerable actualities into the purer world of imagination."

In considering this objection, Hoernlé not only fully admits, but insists, that philosophy cannot be justified by its subjective satisfactoriness if the dualism of objective chaos and subjective orderliness remains: "a unified life is possible only in a unified world; in a cosmos, not in a chaos." Moreover, the philosopher's organization of experience is not successful unless the order that it displays is inherent in experience. Yet, by way of dealing with the objection he has so clearly stated, Hoernlé offers remarks that only postulate what needed to be shown. To call attention to this postulative character in the passages I now quote, I have italicized in each case the word from the use of which that character arises. Hoernlé says, for example, that "unless the universe is a whole, it is meaningless to talk of seeking an attitude towards it as a whole"; that the phrase "the point of view of the whole" means "that the conviction of the wholeness of the universe is a lesson of experience, is taught us by the logic of the facts." That phrase, he says, "claims that experiences, drawn together by reflection, focused so as to interpret each other and thus reveal their common and total meaning, supply the evidence which justifies the conviction of unity and order." And philosophizing, he concludes, "is the pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp, unless the philosopher can rely on the principle that there is nothing in the whole range of experience which does not, in its own degree and measure, help to reveal the nature of the universe."

Let us admit, indeed insist, that the philosopher can and must rely on that principle. What then does reliance upon it reveal to him as to the nature of the universe? That it is a unitary, orderly whole? No. For the objection to the original assertion that it is such a whole was precisely that the universe "as it comes to us in experience . . . is sufficiently chaotic to stamp the suggestion of its all-pervading orderliness as, at best, an hypothesis." It is true that Hoernlé says that the appeal to experience "requires an openness of mind which, whilst rejecting no evidence, relies with due discrimination on the most significant and illuminating experiences." But what does it mean to say that certain experiences are "most significant and illuminating," except that they are experiences which support the conclusion we desire to reach? If one is thus allowed to rule out as not significant any experience which testifies against one's contention, then one can prove practically any contention.

The fact that what experience does reveal is some order indeed, but also some chaos, remains an insuperable objection to defining philosophy initially, as Hoernlé proposes, as the attempt to show that the object of our experience is a whole, a universe and not a "multiverse." For this, after all, is not a definition of philosophy but only the thesis of one kind of philosophy, viz., the monistic. Philosophizing, or, more specifically, metaphysics, has not consisted only in attempting to show that the monistic thesis is true, but rather in attempting to discover which thesis is true, the monistic or the pluralistic, the idealistic or the naturalistic, etc., or whether any of them is true. Often, indeed, some form of unity can, upon investigation, be discerned in apparent disunity, but sometimes what study discovers is disunity behind apparent unity. At all events, no matter how numerous may be the instances where some unity or orderliness has been discovered in what previously seemed a chaotic set of facts, the belief that orderliness and unity completely pervade the world of our experience represents nor a known fact but only a fond hope, so long as there remain any unresolved disunities in it. Countless ones do remain.

4. The Search for Unity No Guarantee that Unity Exists. -- Effort at synthesis, it should be noted, is not distinctive of philosophy. Philosophy also seeks to analyze; and synthesis is no less a part of the effort of science. Both philosophy and science seek unities, regularities, characters that remain invariant through given ranges of variation. As pointed out in the preceding chapter, only the nature of the ranges each explores differentiates the two. Even if philosophy or the sciences were interested only in and looked for nothing but the "pearls" which unities in diversity constitute, and could therefore be defined as consisting of the search for them, this would not in the least guarantee the presence of such a pearl in every oyster. A philosopher whose effort at synthesis "acknowledges at bottom but one 'object' . . . . the whole" is like a pearl diver who should decide to "acknowledge" only oysters containing pearls. Or, if "acknowledging" means only "being satisfied by," there is no a priori or a posteriori reason to believe that what exists is exactly what it would need to be to satisfy us. The complete orderliness some of us crave and persistently seek in the world may not be there, or, even if it is, may be so recondite as forever to elude discernment by the mind of man. This would mean that it must remain forever indistinguishable from a partial chaos, and can no more than the latter constitute the basis for a wisdom.

Refusal to "acknowledge" chaos, or anything else, is an incongruous gesture if what one is engaged in is the search for objective truth. That gesture can be congruous only to something very different, viz., to the selection, from among the various features of the world we find, of one of them as most interesting or most valuable to us, and therefore as the one for which, to the neglect of all others, or in preference to any other, we resolve to search everywhere. Monism, thus, although it cannot be put forth as a verifiable description of the facts we find, can be put forth as a definition of a position we propose to take, i.e., as a definition of the difference between what we shall prize as satisfying to us and what we shall pass over as unsatisfying.

5. Metaphysical Syntheses Worthless when Only Verbal -- Aside from this, however, it is essential that such syntheses as are effected shall not, as too often in metaphysics, be merely verbal syntheses. For to explain what we do not understand by saying -- perhaps in highly esoteric language and at great length -- that God does it, or to harmonize conflicts by saying, perhaps, that they are reconciled and transcended in the consciousness of the Absolute, is not really but only verbally to explain and to harmonize. It is but to give some august proper name to the solution which we hope exists for our difficulties, and to mistake familiarity with the proper name for knowledge of the solution. No explanation or reconciliation of known facts in terms of some postulated entity is real explanation or reconciliation, nor is it any ground for belief that the postulated entity exists, unless the supposition that it exists makes possible inferences which facts nor yet known verify when known, and unless these inferences are at least in part different from those that would be possible if an entity different from the one postulated existed in its stead. Unfortunately, most metaphysicians apply these tests of the not merely verbal character of any speculative construction either not at all or only haphazardly to their speculative constructions. This is perhaps because it has not been clear to them what an empirical test of the truth of these constructions might consist in.

6. Hoernlé on Philosophical Method. -- What conception of philosophical method, we may now ask, accompanies Hoernlé's view of the nature of philosophy and philosophizing discussed above? What he has to say of a positive rather than of a critical sort on the subject appears to stem from his fundamental agreement with James's statement, which he quotes, that philosophies are "just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life," and that these visions are "forced on one by one's total character and experience, and on the whole preferred . . . . as one's best working attitude." For the basis of philosophy in vision or insight means "that philosophical argument of the best sort is material not formal."{2} Therefore, although "philosophers have again and again pinned their hopes to some reform in method," the salvation of philosophy will not be brought about by this alone: "unless the material quality of the would-be philosopher's data be of the right sort, skill in dialectics will not give him the fundamental insights." Hoernlé accordingly has little of a positive nature to contribute to the problem of philosophical method. We find him saying only such things as that "there is a weighing of considerations, a trying out of alternatives, a mobilizing of all the resources of one's experiences and reflection, a feeling one's way from a distracted and unstable to a coherent and stable outlook." The philosopher, he adds, may not be able to demonstrate to others the conclusions he reaches in this way, "for demonstration requires not merely technical correctness of the argument, but acceptance by the other of its premises." These, however, are held by Hoernlé to "depend on the range and quality of each thinker's concrete experience," but in a sense, apparently, in which the premises of arguments in science are not similarly dependent. However, although demonstration of one's philosophical theory may thus be impossible, "yet a reasoned and reasonable theory (or, if the word be preferred, 'faith') is not unattainable and has rewarded the venture of philosophizing again and again."

7. Philosophy as the Articulation of a Faith. -- What perhaps throws most light upon Hoernlé view of philosophy and its method is the description, in the passage just quoted, of philosophies as faiths, implied also when he writes: "There is a deep-seated need in the human mind . . . . the need to feel at home in the universe. From this source spring all philosophies and all religions. . . . . It is a need which at once demands to understand the universe and to approve -- nay, to love it."{3}

These passages make clear that, according to Hoernlé, what philosophizing seeks is nor really knowledge but logically articulated faith, that is, not conclusions susceptible of being demonstrated, but only conclusions susceptible of being believed by a rational being. And, let it be carefully noted, the believability to a rational, i.e., logical being, of a set of propositions about the universe (especially if they be very abstract), does not require that they be true but only that they be free from manifest contradictions, and have bearing on the given individual's spiritual problems.

This remark, I believe, largely explains the emphasis which idealistic philosophy especially, in its metaphysical constructions, has tended to lay on system, consistency, and coherence as criteria, and its accompanying neglect of the question of the truth (as something distinct from coherence) of those constructions. Both the emphasis and the neglect are explained by the hypothesis that what was being sought through those metaphysical constructions was, unconsciously rather than consciously, not fundamentally knowledge concerning man's relation to the universe, but only a believable conceptual content for a faith about that relation.

8. Philosophy and Religion. -- It may be readily admitted that metaphysical systems, whether their propositions be true or not, can be and have widely been used as just such more or less easily believable contents for faiths about the relation between man and the world -- as substitutes for the dogmas of revealed religions -- by persons who found themselves unable to believe the latter and yet craved something to believe. But construction of a believable set of dogmas articulating an unrevealed, man-made religion is nevertheless something between which and philosophy there remains the difference that subsists between faith and knowledge. Belief is knowledge when it has adverted to the evidence and goes no farther than the latter warrants; it is on the contrary faith when it neglects the evidence or goes beyond it. To make this distinction sharp is not to disparage faith or to suggest that it has no legitimate function in the life of man. It is only to make clear the meaning of the question as to which of the two -- faith or knowledge -- philosophy seeks to be. It seems to me beyond question that what most philosophers have considered themselves engaged in was the pursuit of knowledge properly so called. And Hoernlé himself seems to agree that this is what philosophy seeks, when he insists that its conclusions must be dictated "by the logic of the facts" -- by what experience reveals. Yet he ends by characterizing philosophy as faith, and as born of the need to understand, to approve, and to love the universe.

But philosophy cannot essentially be both together. Which of the two it is turns on the answer to the question: What ultimately ought to determine the nature of the conclusions of philosophy? Ought it to be the human craving to understand, approve, and love the universe? Or ought it ro be faithfulness to the testimony of the observable facts, even if this testimony should be that the universe is chaotic, blameworthy, and hateful? The need to choose between these two imperatives would never arise if both always dictated the same conclusions. In any case, it is the choice we are prepared to make between the two, if we have to choose, that answers the question as to whether what we expect the conclusions of our thinking to provide is essentially a comforting religious faith, or philosophical knowledge.

9. Urban's Cenception of Philosophy Open to Similar Critcisms. -- Comments of the same general nature as those applying to Hoernlé's conception of the nature of philosophy seem to me relevant to W. M. Urban's defense of the "great tradition" in philosophy, which, he says, is characterized by the fact that it finds the world "ultimately meaningful and intelligible."{4} For to evaluate the soundness of any enterprise which purports to be a search for truth not yet known, on the basis of whether what it discovers is of a kind we welcome rather than abhor, is to confess that what we are interested in is essentially comforting belief rather than truth. Even if, as Hoernlé and Urban hold, truth and comforting belief should happen to coincide -- thus saving us from the necessity of actually deciding which we value most -- nevertheless, as remarked above, what is significant of the sort of enterprise we are really engaged in is which of the two we are ready to choose if the necessity for choice between them should present itself. I hold that unless truth is what we are prepared to cling to in any such case, our enterprise is not really philosophy but religion incognito. If this is admitted to be the test of genuinely philosophical enterprise, then the test cannot be what kind of world we find as a result of genuine philosophizing.

That these remarks are relevant to Urban's position will become evident if we now note what he has to say on the subject of intelligibility. He makes clear what he means when he contrasts knowledge of the world, which the sciences give us, with understanding of it, which they do not give us but which philosophy should, and tells us that by understanding he means axiological interpretation: "If genuine intelligibility is sought, the essential function of philosophy must become axiological interpretation, and it is at this point that the distinctive ideal of philosophical intelligibility is to be found. "{5}

In the light of this passage, Urban's statement that "in the last resort there are only two kinds of philosophies: those that find the world ultimately meaningful and intelligible and those that do not," means that the former -- those belonging to the "great tradition" -- find the world axiologically interpretable, and the latter -- the "modernist" -- do not. But one is moved to ask whether any philosophies exist that do not find the world axiologically interpretable. Bertrand Russell's philosophy, for instance, is beyond doubt regarded by Urban as being in anything but the "great tradition" -- rather as an example, if not the most horrible example, of "modernism" in philosophy. Yet it certainly does not find the world axiologically uninterpretable. As Hoernlé has pointed out, it concludes with a very definite evaluation of the world when it asserts the concrete part of it, at least, to be such that reason cannot be at home in it, such that it denies the hopes and the ideals of man, and therefore calls for stoicism or for a retreat into the serene abstract realm of mathematics and logic.

This makes it clear that when Urban speaks of finding the world intelligible, he means not merely finding it axiologically interpretable, but in addition and essentially finding it interpretable in a way satisfying to the aspirations of man. That is, he gratuitously identifies value with what is only a species of value, viz., positive as distinguished from negative value:

The world, to be intelligible . . . . must be livable. . . . . An intelligible world is . . . . in the last analysis one in which a life of meaning and significance can be lived. In a world ultimately impenetrable, ultimately incomprehensible, such a life is, indeed, impossible. But what makes a penetrable, a comprehensible world? Is it not finally and solely the fact that it provides the context for an intelligible life? Any life, to be intelligible, requires to be understood through the ideals or values by which that life is lived. But a world, in order to be an intelligible context for such a life, must also be one in which the values, by which the individual life is lived, have their counterpart in an order of values that is cosmic.{6}

But obviously a life lived in terms of fear, bewilderment, disappointed hopes, and stoical resignation or psychological escape, is, alas, only too intelligible to us; for most of us have had some taste of life in such terms. And the world which is an intelligible context for such a life must indeed be one in which the values by which the individual life is lived have their counterpart in a certain aspect of a cosmic order of values, but in this case a negative aspect, viz., an order which includes danger, unintelligibility, ruthlessness, inexorability.

Urban seems constantly to be assuming that the fact that we seek something -- specifically, intelligibility -- presupposes that it is present where we seek it. But what is true is only that any conscious seeking presupposes that we know what sort of thing it is that we seek. That is, seeking something does not presuppose either that we know it to exist, or that it does exist. The conscious search for intelligibility presupposes existence in us of knowledge of what intelligibility would consist in; but that is something very different from knowledge of the existence of intelligibility in the world outside us. Knowing what we are looking for does not prove or create the slightest presumption that it exists.{7} Existence of a thought is not existence of the matter thought of. The latter alone is here in question.

10. Urban on Philosophical Method. -- The great instrument of philosophical discovery, according to Urban, is the "principle of self-refutation." It "has always been the favorite method of distinguishing between" necessary presuppositions of intelligible philosophical discourse, and mere avoidable prejudices of this or that philosopher -- "it may almost be said to be the typical philosophical method."{8}

I do not believe, however, that Urban anywhere describes in general terms how exactly the principle of self-refutation operates in proving that a given proposition has the status of necessary presupposition of intelligible discourse. What he does is to describe in some detail one example of self-refutation, viz., that of a skeptic who happens to assert that he knows nothing. But he does not point out which proposition in particular is shown to be a 'presupposition of intelligible discourse' rather than an "avoidable prejudice" by the fact that the skeptic's assertion is self-refuting. As concerns the question of the work which the principle "may legitimately be expected to perform," Urban indicates his intention of showing it in detail farther on, and for the time says that "it is one of the determining principles of intelligible philosophical discourse. It is concerned with those presuppositions which the thinker cannot deny without making himself unintelligible."{9}

Let us see first what is the case of Urban's skeptic. He is supposed to have asserted with conviction that he knows nothing. If it is true that he knows nothing, he then does not even know that he knows nothing; and yet to have asserted that he knows nothing was to claim that he knew that. Therefore, "this which he claims to know he does not know."{10}

It may be remarked first that if, as supposedly was the case, all that the skeptic did was to assert with conviction, "I do not know anything," then he has not refuted himself. For he has nor either asserted or implied that he knows that he does not know anything. What he delivered himself of was only a statement of something he believes, and the proposition he believes, viz., "I do not know anything," not only may be true but may without contradiction be believed by him. For to believe the truth is not the same thing as to know the truth. Yet to believe the proposition, "I do not know anything," is genuinely to be a skeptic, or at least an agnostic.

However, the case Urban means to consider is evidently that of a person who not only is a skeptic in that he believes the proposition, "I do not know anything," but in addition has been foolish enough to assert also, "I know that I do not know anything." Now this assertion, containing as it does a contradiction, is of course false a priori and self-refuting. The contradictory of it is therefore true a priori and self-evident. That contradictory is, "Either I know something, or I do not know that I do not know anything," which is a special case of the principle of excluded middle. Urban states that from the fact that the skeptic has contradicted himself, one cannot conclude that he knows anything; and this is, as just pointed out, quite correct. But what can one then conclude? What, in the instance, has, by appeal to the principle of self-refutation, been shown to be a "necessary presupposition of intelligible discourse?" So far as I can see, nothing at all. The principles of noncontradiction and of excluded middle themselves are statements of certain conditions of the possibility of truth of discourse, or, if we should prefer to call it so, conditions of the material intelligibility of discourse.{11} But even that is not shown by pointing out that the unwary skeptic's assertion was self-contradictory. It is shown by pointing out that pointing out that it is self-contradictory is universally accepted as sufficient evidence that his assertion cannot be true.

In any case, the propositions which, by appeal to the principle of self-refutation, Urban claims to establish as necessary presuppositions of intelligible philosophical discourse, are not the principles of noncontradiction and excluded middle themselves. They are the propositions that the world is a totality, has meaning and value, and is real. But what I find in his text at the crucial points seems to be either an invoking of the principle only in the sense of mentioning it, i.e., without showing how it establishes what it is invoked to establish, or else the forcing upon the assertion alleged to be self-refuting -- which he supposes to be made by some one to disprove the totality, meaningfulness, or reality of the world -- of a meaning obviously other than that which anyone making that assertion would acknowledge as his own. For example, he writes: "He who says there is no meaning in the world is asserting a self-refuting proposition. . . . . He who says we do not find meaning in the world but put it there is talking nonsense. For we are in the world and our meanings are already part of that world."{12}

But who is there, who has said that there is no meaning in the world, who would acknowledge that what is refuted by the remarks just quoted is what he meant by what he said? Obviously, what anyone would mean, who asserted that there is no meaning in the world, would be that there is none in the nonhuman or nonanimal world. The world he would be talking about would not be the world constituted by purposive beings already known to him to exist. It would be the world, other than the one they constitute, which they face. What he would mean would be, for example, that rain, sunshine, humidity, drought, floods, earthquakes, heat, cold, plagues, the abundance of the tropics, the revolutions of the planets, storms and fair weather, the abundance or scarcity of certain minerals, their distribution, etc. -- in short, the other than man- or animal-made conditions under which man and the other known purposive animals have to live -- are not manifestations of purpose, i.e., of a striving for value, on the part of the rest of the universe. This assertion, whether in fact it happens to be true or not, is not self-refuting. Moreover, the question whether that assertion is true is the question men have in mind when they ask whether there is a God or whether on the contrary the world they face is only a complex of blind mechanical forces. The reply that Urban, in the passage above, makes to men who want w know that, is that they themselves are in the world, and that, since they contain some godliness, the world obviously contains some; and therefore their doubt is self-refuting. This is like saying to a man who has come to a dry goods store, and who asks whether there is in the store any cloth like a sample he brings, that of course there is some, namely his sample, since he is in the store; and that therefore his question is absurd.
[Table of Contents] [Chapter 3]

Notes

{1} Hoernlé, Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics [Back]

{2} Hoernlé, Studies in Contemporary Metaphysics, chap. ii, p. 27. The quotations that follow are from the same chapter. [Back]

{3} Idealism as a Philosophy, p. 23. [Back]

{4} W. M. Urban, The Intelligible World (1929), p. 1. [Back]

{5} The Intelligible World, p. 180, note. [Back]

{6} The Intelligible World, p. 183. [Back]

{7} Cf. Aristotle, Analyst. post. ii, chap. 7. [Back]

{8} The Intelligible World, p. 44. [Back]

{9} The Intelligible World, p. 46. [Back]

{10} The Intelligible World, p. 45. [Back]

{11} They are not, however, conditions of the formal intelligibility of discourse. For example, the term "round square" implies a contradiction. Yet its meaning is so clearly intelligible to me that if any figure be drawn, I can immediately tell whether or not it is a round square, and why it is or is not. [Back]

{12} The Intelligible World, p. 59. [Back]


[Table of Contents] [Chapter 3]