Logotherapy is the search for the unique meaning and purpose in one's life in an attempt to design and reveal his particular journey in life and his role and task to do whatever it takes to actualise and realise his meanings, potentials, potentialities and him, determines him, gives him and his experiences and actions and identity and existential meaning and become somebody, a true, actualised and authentic individual being. The Greek word 'logo’, in fact, denotes meaning. Thus, Logotherapy regards the individual's striving to find meaning and purpose in his life (which logotherapists call the will to meaning), as well as a personal identity that would make his life meaningful, fully actualised and worthwhile, as the motivational force in man and as the element that defines and determines the individual, his life and his existence.
For the need of comparison with the rival approach of Freudian psychoanalysis and as an illustration of the motivational force, the primary motivational force in the Freudian doctrine and psychoanalysis is the urge and inclination to seek satisfaction and pleasure, normally in the form of the most brutish and primitive, basic sources of pleasure (sexual pleasure and urge, satiating hunger and thirst and sleeping). This Freudian motivational force plays a crucial role in the Freudian deterministic theory of personality and morality development, which was depicted above, as constituting the motivational force for this development of human personality and morality. For its part, Logotherapy focus man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness as well as his morbidity and - destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Further, in his numerous writings Nietzsche also talks of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, in and instincts or in merely reconciling the conflicting claims of the id, ego and superego or in the mere adaptation and adjustment to society and environment and has him determined by them. Man is, thus, free and responsible for his life and personal existence and defines, creates and determines him by his willing to meanings, purposes and values and striving to surpass him and his existence and actualise those meanings and values and, as a consequence, him, his life and personal existence in the world. Nevertheless, he can always succumb to the world of willing to mere pleasure and its satiation, determinism by others, conformism, genetics and hereditary, mass crowds, industry etc., absorb in it and give up the inclination to search for meanings and values in his own existence and life and actualise them. The destructive result of such a deed is described below Man's life, according to Logotherapy, ought to be a journey of surpassing his everyday existence, situations and existence and realising the meanings and objectives that he sought, searched, found and set to him to actualise.
The process of finding meanings is one of exploring all human values for those that fit best with the given treated individual's own, unique life experiences and that he can most profitably pursue as a surge for meaning. Actually, Frankl teaches that merely through the process of education and through the acceptance of full responsibility as for his personal, individualistic and unique choices of meaning by the treated individual, the treated individual can build an integrated personality with a special life task that will give direction and sense of purpose to his own existence.
In his writings (Essays on Aesthetics, Untimely Meditations, The Gay Science and others) Nietzsche wishes to be considered by his readers and viewed in and by history as a psychologist who practice’s psychology and who has devised 'a new psychology'. Nietzsche's works are viewed by several authors (for instance, Kaufmann and Golomb) as psychological ones, a fact that is disregarded by numerous authors who regard Nietzsche as a mere anti philosopher and a writer of short, beautiful verse. Nietzsche has also sought to bring the nature of man, the unconscious, the conscious, conscious, analysis, relationships with other individuals, the inner state (emotions, sensations, feelings and the like), irrational sources of man's power and greatness as well as his morbidity and -destructiveness into the scope of existence.
Further, in his numerous writings Nietzsche also talks of the mind, the mental, instincts, reflexes, reflexive movements, the brain, symbolic representations, images, views, metaphors, language, experiences, innate and hereditary psychological elements, defence, protective, mechanisms, repression, suppression als etc. As an illustration, Nietzsche describes how blocked instinctual powers turn within the individual into resentment, - hatred, hostility and aggression. Moreover, Nietzsche strives to analyse human being, his crisis, his despair and his existence in the world and to find means so as to alleviate human crises and despair.
These aspects of Nietzsche's work elicit a tendency to compare Nietzsche's doctrine with that of Freud and psychoanalysis and to argue that the Freudian doctrine and school (the psychoanalytic theory of human personality on which the psychotherapeutic technique of psychoanalysis is based) and method of treatment (psychoanalysis) has been influenced and affected by Nietzsche's philosophy and work and the Nietzsche an doctrine. As a demonstration from the relevant literature, according to Golomb's (1987) thesis, the theoretical core of psychoanalysis is already part and parcel of Nietzsche's philosophy, insofar as it is based on concepts that are both displayed in it and developed by it - concepts such as the unconscious, repression, sublimation, the id, the superego, primary and secondary processes and interpretations of dreams.
Nevertheless, the actual situation in the domains of psychotherapy, psychiatry and clinical psychology is, by no means, strictly so. While the two savants (Nietzsche and Freud) endeavour to understand man, to develop the healthy power that is still present in the individual and the neurotic patient so as to overcome and suppress the psychological boundaries that repress his vitality and inhibit his ability to function freely and creatively and attain truth, the difference between the psychodynamic school, approach, movement and method of treatment, in general, and psychoanalysis, in particular, and the existential approach to psychotherapy, the existential movement and the existential, humanistic school of psychology and method of treatment that have been stemmed from the doctrines and views of Freud and Nietzsche is profound and significant, as far as the actual psychotherapeutic treatment is concerned. The reason as for this difference lie in the variation in the two savants' view and definition of man and human existence, the nature and character of man and his relationship with the world and the environment, as well as in the variation in the intellectual soil, the tasks, roles, endeavours, relationships and encounters and actualising set and determined (by the individual patient her) objectives and tasks make the old event a matter of the past and the life of the patient too full, excited and actualised so as to analyse and experience the problem and cause of the neurosis/psychosis and, therefore, influence and alleviate the psychosis/neurosis. Frankl and Lukas recount and provide numerous clinical illustrations so as to demonstrate this point.
This has shown that the Nietzsche an doctrine may be regarded as a personality theory and, as such, may be employed as the foundations for the devising of a psychotherapeutic approach. The Nietzsche an doctrine defines man as a being who is fully responsible for his life and personal existence and possesses mastery over his fate, life and existence as well as his conduct, his nature, identity and image. As such, he possesses the power to determine, create and organise his ideologies, values and morals and, as a consequence, him, who and what he is. Nevertheless, the individual has to suppress and overcome the psychological inclination to have his ideologies and values be determined for him. Then, he has to realise the power to determine him so as to gain as much power as possible and become a powerful, individual being.
In order to demonstrate the applicability of the Nietzsche an doctrine in psychiatry and psychotherapy, Frankl's existential approach of Logotherapy was displayed, briefly outlined, described and illustrated. Logotherapy guides the treated patient in overcoming the inclination to conform and be determined and help her seek and realise meanings and purposes throughout her life and personal existence with a view to create, actualise and determine her, to lead a meaningful life and existence and to become whoever and whatever she wishes to become and be.
With that, in the course of Logotherapy, the treated individual must assume power, responsibility and mastery over his own life and personal existence and create and design his life and existence and, as a consequence, him in accordance with his own set values and purposes. Once the individual has found the reasons, meanings and purposes to living and in all aspects of his life and personal existence (the painful ones and the happy ones) he is able to lead a more meaningful life and put up with almost any living conditions. In fact, Frankl employs Logotherapy by two famous quotes from Nietzsche - "whatever does not kill me makes me stronger" and "Man can have the how if he has the why.” Thus, according to Logotherapy, the individual's entire state of being and mental and physical conditions are likely to be ameliorated, alleviated and sometimes even cured once he has established meanings and purposes into, to and in the human existence, as a whole, and his own life and personal existence, in particular, and is able to lead a meaningful, purposeful and actualized life.
Once establishing that the Nietzsche an doctrine has many psychological aspects and elements in it and, therefore, possesses the ability and the potentiality to provide the core and essence of a psychotherapeutic approach in psychiatry and clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, which is the most popular and known psychotherapeutic approach (in as well as outside the relevant fields of psychiatry and psychology), immediately comes up to one's mind. In fact, the present paper was commenced by stating the similarity in terms of the terminology and the concepts that are employed in both the Nietzsche an doctrine and the Freudian, psychoanalytic, doctrine and psychoanalysis. Moreover, the present paper has described the inclination to compare the Freudian doctrine with the Nietzsche an doctrine and the Nietzsche an doctrine to the psychoanalytic method and approach of psychotherapeutic treatment (i.e., psychoanalysis). Presently, as far as quoting Golomb's clear and bold assertion that the Nietzsche an doctrine, in fact, constitutes not less than the theoretical core of Freudian psychoanalysis. In fact, the present paper has set it the task of examining this assertion by Jacob Golomb.
Nevertheless, it was the present paper's primary objective to refute this assertion and to show that the Nietzsche an doctrine does not constitute the theoretical core of psychoanalysis. Both the theoretical, conceptual, and the practical, applied psychotherapeutic, differences between the Freudian doctrine and its method of psychotherapeutic treatment (Psychoanalysis) and the Nietzsche an doctrines were displayed, outlined, illustrated and depicted in the present paper in some length. On the other hand, this has demonstrated that the Nietzsche an doctrine constitutes the theoretical core and essence of the existential approach to psychotherapy, which, in fact, constitutes the most vicious rival to psychoanalysis.
Moreover, the existential approach of Logotherapy is depicted as a rival approach to psychoanalysis in the same field as psychoanalysis (that is psychiatry and clinical psychology) it is described as the one that really employs the Nietzsche an doctrine as its true theoretical core and essence and as its foundation. It seems less feasible to ignore and skip on the similarities in and between the 'will to power' and its realisation and the 'will to meaning' and its actualization, the ambition to surpass and overcome all that prevents and suppresses the will to power/meaning and the individual existence, the idea of free will, the notion of full responsibility for and mastery over one's life and the idea of the freedom to determine and create one. Those last three concepts constitute key concepts in the Nietzsche an doctrine, the existential movement and Logotherapy. The existential movement was described in the present paper and Nietzsche have been to forebear and deviser of the existential movement, together with Soren, Aabye Kierkegaard.
The Freudian, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic doctrines, for their part, regard human personality, morality, ideologies, feelings, emotions and conduct as deterministic ones that are either innate or determined by events and other types of stimuli. The Freudian doctrine, therefore, maintains that the best manner to alleviate human crisis and despair (both neurosis and psychosis) is to search and find the reasons, causes and determinants for them. The psychoanalytic method of treatment is, therefore, really a technique of searching and finding and analysing and examining thoroughly and freely the events, experiences and stimuli that it assumes to be the causes and determinants of the neurosis/psychosis.
The process of searching and finding significant stimuli and events in the individual patient's life and of analysing the individual patient's life and existence freely applies the shuttering and overpowering of a defence mechanism that represses those events and stimuli from being revealed and aware of by the given analysed individual who has undergone them and regressed them to his subconscious. This process, therefore, strives to make the stimuli and events, which are assumed to be the cause, reason and determinant of the neurosis/psychosis, come up to the analysed neurotic/psychotic patient's consciousness and become fully aware of by the analysed neurotic/psychotic patient and, thus, revealed and analysed freely and thoroughly by both the patient and the psychoanalyst.
While overcoming the defence mechanism and fully revealing the reasons and causes as for the neurosis/psychosis and exposing them to the patient's consciousness enable their analysing freely and without any restraints. Once the patient is fully aware of the event and stimulus that have generated his illness, crises and despair and those events and stimuli are analysed and examined thoroughly and freely the neurosis/psychosis is cured.
A tendency to assert that the Nietzsche an doctrine influences the Freudian, psychoanalytic doctrine and approach and the Freudian method of psychoanalysis and that the Nietzsche an doctrine constitutes the theoretical essence and core of Freudian psychoanalysis is erroneous and misleading. The Nietzsche an doctrine, on the other hand, is the theoretical basis and core of the existential movement, existential, humanistic psychology and the existential approach to psychotherapy. Specifically, the Nietzsche an doctrine constitutes the foundations of Logotherapy, also known as existential analysis.
The two movements, schools and approaches are rival ones and so are Logotherapy and Psychoanalysis. While there are some similarities in their shared ambition to alleviate man's crises and despair, in the terminology that they employ and in their shared endeavour to suppress and overpower the psychological boundaries that repress the individual patient from attaining truth and true and to free truth and the true, the representational notion of what man actually is, an individual being, the, the true, actualisation and the like, which constitute key issues in theories of personality and which define human personality, vary immensely and cannot differ more, in terms of their treatment and definition by the two movements and approaches.
In fact, other movements and schools such as Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence also employ concepts such as the, consciousness, unconsciousness, memory, recall, morality, revelation, human nature, personality and character. Nevertheless, attempting to compare them with psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic movement would be an absurd task. Their view and definition of those concepts vary immensely from the definition of those concepts by Psychoanalysis and their application and application of those concepts differs greatly from the utilisation of those concepts by psychoanalysis, although Cognitive Psychology has created cognitive psychotherapy and talks about the recall and storage of information by and in the mind and the access and revelation of information - that is the representational model of Cognitive Psychology and the cognitive revolution and movement, which dominates cognitive psychology.
It is, thus, the overall designing, devising and depiction of the approach, doctrine and theory, and of what they endeavour to do and achieve - their definition of their main subject matter (Man, and his existence in the world, his personality, nature, image and character) and of key concepts; Combining of those key concepts by them, their manner of applying those definitions in practice - which make up a given doctrine, approach and method of treatment and applicability and enable the comparison of the particular doctrine (approach) with other doctrines, approaches and methods of applicability and treatment of a similar type. Comparing selected aspects, components and elements of two or more doctrines and approaches may lead to the omission of important features and constituents that, in fact, vary and are contrasted significantly in the two doctrines and approaches and, therefore, to the adoption of the erroneous conclusion that the doctrines and approaches are similar and comparable when they are, in fact, totally different and contrasted. The Nietzsche an/Freudians, thus, shown how careful one should be so as not to be misled in comparing two doctrines, theories and approaches and claiming that one doctrine, theory and approach affect and influences another doctrine, theory and approach and constitutes its theoretical core.
According to Nietzsche, tragedy began in the musical, undifferentiated Dionysian chorus and only later developed the discursive and discrete Apollonian action and characters in which Aristotle had located the essence of the genre. Real tragedy, according to Nietzsche, depicts the doomed efforts of the Apollonian heroes to rise above the constraints of their individuality. It celebrates those efforts as a characteristic human gesture in the face of the ultimate irrationality of the world, and in the chorus, which always remains on stage after the hero's destruction, it offers, of The Birth of Tragedy, the "metaphysical comfort . . . that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable.”
Nietzsche resigned from the university in 1879, and, though Schopenhauer and Wagner ceased to be the dominant influences on his thought, many of the questions addressed in The Birth of Tragedy continued to occupy him throughout his life; the book it, despite its many problems, has remained one of his most popular and well-known works.
Too such "dogmatic" or "metaphysical" thought Nietzsche opposed his "perspectivism," a view he once expressed by writing that "facts are precisely what there is not, only interpretations.” He believed that the emergence of the possibility of perspectivism was due in part to the fact that Christianity had provided it’s very own undermining. This is the sense of his notorious dictum, "God is dead.” By this he meant that faith in God, which involves a total commitment to truthfulness, has finally led to the gradually emerging realization that God does not exist after all and that therefore there can be no objective, absolute values.
“God is dead” - and man, in his heart of hearts, is incapable of forgiving him for having done away with Him, he is bent upon punishing him for this, his “greatest deed.” For the time being, however, he will take refuge in many an evasive action. With the instinct of as born hunter, Nietzsche pursues him into all his hiding places, cornering him in each of the morality without religion? Not so: “All purely moral demands without their religious basis,” he says, “must needs end in nihilism.” The time, Nietzsche predicts, is fast approaching when secular crusaders, tools of man’s collective suicide, will devastate the world with their rival claims to compensate for the lost Kingdom of Heaven by setting up on earth the ideological rules of Love and Justice that, by the very force of the spiritual derangement involved, will lead to the rules of cruelty and slavery, and he prophesies that the war fair global domination will be fought on behalf of philosophical doctrines.
Was he, having lost God, capable of truly believing in anything? “He who no longer finds what is in God will find it nowhere - he must either deny it or create it.” Only the “either-or” does not apply. All his life Nietzsche tried to do both. He had the passion for truth and no belief in it. He had the love of life and despaired of it. This is the stuff from which demons are made perhaps the most powerful secret demon eating the heart out of the modern mind. To have written and enacted the extremist story of this mind is Nietzsche’s true claim to greatness.
What, then, is the final importance of Nietzsche? For one, lies in his example that is so strange, profound, confounded, alluring, and forbidding that it can hardly be looked upon as exemplary, but it cannot be ignored either. For it has something to do with living lucidly in the dark age of which he so creatively despaired.
Obnoxious as Nietzsche found the specific values of Christian morality, he reacted even more negatively to its universalism. Christian morality, he believed, prevents the few people who do not belong to "the herd" from going in good conscience against the majority's values and from fashioning their own way of life - a way of life that will differ from one type of person to another and will make no claim to universal validity. Nietzsche constantly praised such creativity and claimed that the only difference between the Christian and the type of character he praises as the Übermensch, the "free spirit" or "new philosopher," is that while both are creators of values, only the latter remains aware of this fact and actually takes pleasure in it.
That Nietzsche believes about life he also believes about interpretation -hence his immense importance for literary theory and criticism. As certain values come to appear binding, so many interpretations cease to display their interpretive status and begin to appear as fact about the texts they concern, which means that they no longer appear as interpretations at all. Just as Nietzsche's "genealogical" method aims to show how the particular interpretations of life that created the moral values of Christianity came about, so literary criticism must turn to an unmasking of what we take for granted in connection with every text. Such "facts" are the products of earlier, accepted, and therefore unacknowledged interpretations. Just as there is not a single mode of life, good for all people, so there can clearly ever be a single, overarching interpretation of a particular text that everyone will have to accept. "The" world and "the" text are equally indeterminate.
All interpretation, moral or literary, is an expression of what Nietzsche calls "the will to power." Much that he wrote about this idea sounds as if he believed in some sort of crude overpowering of "the weak" by "the strong" and has seemed too many to align him with fascist theories of political power. Nevertheless, the idea that interpretations manifest the will to power is the idea that no interpretation is a pure objective mirroring of the facts, since there are no facts to be mirrored in the first place. All the same, it is an effort to fashion a mode of life, or a reading of a text, through which the type of character each interpreter constitutes can best be manifested: "One seeks a picture of the world in that philosophy in which we feel freest, i.e., in which our most powerful drive feels free to function.
Nietzsche therefore urges those who are able to do so not to remain in the grip of dogmatism and to fashion instead interpretations and lives of their own. In his view, being important is much more important than to be good. Even if the interpretation of life we are in the process of fashioning cannot but seem binding to us - because conceiving of another is impossible, at that time, -he still urges that we retain the generalized awareness that there is nothing necessary about it. Any such construct is our own creation. Nietzsche, furthermore, wants his readers to revel in their difference from everyone else, if they are, of course, capable of being different in the first place. However, he cannot possibly convince his readers to be different: one either is or is not capable of that. Accordingly, the nature of his intended audience and the mode of address appropriate to them remain for him questionable throughout his writings.
In doing so, Nietzsche also made the form of his writing essential to its content and thus raised profound questions about the relationship between philosophy and literature. The consequences of his views and of his overall project are still being pursued in philosophy, literature, and criticism. If his perspectivism is, after all, true, then, in appropriately paradoxical fashion, this pursuit will never be finally over.
Nietzsche’s apropos question, it turns out, is a good place to begin regarding his subject. For the Problem of God cannot be defined by any single question but is more an umbrella term covering a variety of ancient and more overshadowing terminological varieties in reassembling the covering umbrella of
modernity and the postmodern questions regarding God. Does God exist? What is the nature of God? Why is there evil and suffering in the world? Although a slight ray of light is obscured but implicitly within these are questions about our own meaning and purpose in the world. If God does exist, why has humanity been created? If God is dead, what is the right way for us to go about conducting our lives?
It is in defining and examining the (for him historical) phenomenon of nihilism that Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity sets in, and it has remained the only truly subtle point that, within the whole range of his more unrestrained argumentativeness, this Antichrist makes against Christianity. For it is at this point that Nietzsche asks (and asks the same question in countless variations throughout his work): What is the specific qualifying that the Christian tradition has instilled a cultivated in the minds of men? They are, he thinks, two fold: on the one hand, a more refined sense of truth than any other civilization has known, an almost uncontrollable desire for absolute spiritual and intellectual certainties, and, on the other hand, the ever-present suspicion that life on this earth is not a supreme value, but in need of a higher, belief transcendental justification. This, Nietzsche believes, is a destructive, and even -destructive alliance, which is bound finally to corrode the very Christian beliefs on which it rests, for the mind exercised and guided in its search adversarial consciousness by the most sophisticated and comprehensive supreme beings that the world has ever known - a theology that through Thomas Aquinas has assimilated into its grand system the genius of Aristotle was at the same time fashioned and directed by the indelible Christian distrust of the ways of the world. Consequently, it ought to follow, with the utmost logical precision and determination, a course of systematically “devaluing” the knowable real.
This mind, Nietzsche predicts, will eventually, in a frenzy of intellectual honestly, unmask a humbug what it began by regarding as the finer things in life. The boundless faith in that, the joint legacy of Christ and Greek, will in the end dislodge every possible belief in truth of any faith. Souls, long disciplined in a school of unworthiness and humility, will insist upon knowing the worst about themselves, and only be able to grasp what is humiliating. Psychology will denigrate the creations of beauty, laying bare the wangle of unworthy desires of which they are “mere” sublimation.
All new knowledge about the soul, knowledge about a different soul, can it ever happen that the freely discovering mind says to the soul, “This is what you are, “is it not quite as if the mind said to the soul: “This is how In wish you to see your. This is the image after which In create you. This is my secret about you: In shock you with it and, shockingly, at once wrest it from you.” Worse: having received and revealed it secret, their soul is no longer what In was when it lived in secrecy. For there are secrets that are created in the process of their revelation. Worse still, having been told its secrets, the soul may create to be a soul. This step from modern psychology to soullessness is imperceptibly distanced from that of modern physics, just as dissoluble the concept of “Matter.”
This valuing quantification is manifest in today’s world, which we live in an age during which many of us have experienced the death of God. Its well-known phrase is recounted as, "God is dead” which was made famous by the 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Although he was by temperament and atheist, Nietzsche’s controversial statement was more a realization on his part than a pronouncement. He simply weighed the astonishing German military power of his day and the incredible advances in modern science (including Darwinism) and technology against the declining belief in the Christian God. For Nietzsche, human ingenuity and power had reached such heights as to make God psychologically irrelevant. Although he has often been ridiculed and scorned by right-wing fundamentalists who have misunderstood his meaning, Nietzsche him felt great ambivalence concerning the death of God. On the one hand, he feared and predicted humanity, with no system of moral guidance, would plunge it into wars and disasters the likes of which have never been seen. On the other hand, he was hopeful the life denying ethics of Christianity might be replaced with a new life affirming philosophy. "At last," he wrote, "the sea, our sea, lies open before us. Perhaps there has never been so open a sea." If Nietzsche only gave voice to a thought concerning the relevancy of God that was increasingly on the minds of many in his day, it was the horrific Holocaust a few years later that would nail the lid on God’s coffin. In the face of such horror and suffering it became impossible for many to believe in the existence of a just and loving God. As the German Theologian and pacifist, Deitrich Bonhoeffer wrote while imprisoned for plotting to assassinate Hitler, ". . . everything evidently gets along without ‘God,’ and just as well as before." In this statement, like Nietzsche, Bonhoeffer realized that humanity had come of age, no longer needing faith in God when it could rely upon its own inventiveness to determine its fate and control the forces of nature. However, the concentration of human suffering and evil displayed during the Holocaust touched upon a nerve essential to the human condition and much older than recent advancements through science and technology. More than a century before both Nietzsche and Bonhoeffer, philosopher David Hume asked "Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? From what place then is evil? Theologians as renown as C.S. Lewis and thinkers as ancient as Epicurus have voiced similar questions. For many the facts of human suffering is proof enough that God cannot exist. Nonetheless, the problem of suffering has proven such a stumbling block for theologians over the centuries that a range of differing solutions has been proposed. In specific regard to the Holocaust, for example, Robert L. Rubenstein argues in his book After Auschwitz, "To see any purpose in the death camps, the traditional believer is forced to regard the most demonic, antihuman explosion in all history as a meaningful expression of God’s purpose. He goes on to say, "A God who tolerates the suffering that become more even that one single innocent child, may that is either infinitely cruel or hopelessly indifferent. For Rubenstein the reality of such evil proves that even if God does exist, such a being cannot be all-powerful.
Other solutions to the problem suggest suffering is a divine test of some sort, such as the biblical character Job went through. Unfortunately this solution also implicates God in the malicious and intentional suffering humans experience. Some blame humanity it for evil and suffering, through the doctrines of original sin and free will. This argument has several problems. Firstly, if God is omniscient, all-knowing, why create a world that would fall so utterly from its original perfection? Furthermore, even if God is bound by some imposed guideline of non-interference, as Creator such a God must take some, if not full, responsibility for the outcome of Creation. Finally, blaming human beings for the existence of evil and suffering in the world may explain moral evils, but it doesn’t explain the presence of natural evil such as disease, tornadoes, droughts, hurricanes, etc., etc., events’ human beings have no control over. Finally, some theologies give God a get-out-of-jail-free-card by simply concluding the ways of God are incomprehensible to human beings. That is, God may appear indifferent, malicious, uncaring, but this is only because we, in our limited capacity, cannot understand the mind of God. All of these arguments, however, may be last ditch efforts to cling to the belief in God even amid what some have concluded is overwhelming evidence that such a God does not exist.
In fairness, it should be noted that the hope for a perfect world without suffering and evil may be typical of modern humanity and not indicative of humanity in general. With the advent of science and the increasing sufficiency of technology, both mechanical and medical, is our latent hope that we will one day solve all our problems by ushering in a techno-utopian world. To do so, however, many have come to the conclusion that we must kill first kill God, which is to say, if we are to advance we must move beyond our antiquated and traditional beliefs. In his book, The Problem of God, Yesterday and Today, John Courtney Murray describes two types of postmodern atheists, the atheist of the communist world Revolution and the atheist of the Theatre, For the Marxist, according to Murray, the goal is to build a new world, free of all misery, by giving human beings their freedom, a freedom from belief in God and from religion it that is viewed as an opium of the people. "He has discovered that it is history, not God, that makes the nature of man." Inscribes Murray, "This discovery was the death of God. When man came to know him through history, when he came to understand that he is the creature of history and not of God, God was dead. He died out of history, leaving man as its master."
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely rational explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of Cartesian dualism with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’ do not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘essences’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily dismissed all pervious philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The problem, claimed Nietzsche, is that earlier versions of the ‘will to power’ disguise the fact that all allege truths were arbitrarily created in and are expression or manifestations of individual ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and mater is more absolute and total than had previously been imagined. Based on the assumptions that there are no real or necessary correspondences between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he declared that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he conceived it, however, it was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new massage of individual existence founded on will.
“Those who fail to enact their existence in this space,” says Nietzsche, “are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialist ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd.” Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. Science, he said, not only exalted natural phenomena and favours reductionistic examinations of phenomena at the expense of mind. It also seeks to educe mind to a mere material substance, and thereby to displace or subsume the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic description that disallows any basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and his radical empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulful mechanistic inverse proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Though a curious course of events, attempts by Edmund Husserl, a philosopher trained in higher math and physics, to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of human consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche. Husserl, of course, was a principal founder of ‘phenomenology’ and from Franz Brentano (1838-1917) inherited the view that the central problem in understanding thought is that of explaining the way in which an intentional direction, or content, can belong to the mental phenomenon that exhibits it. Mental phenomena are founded in sensory data, but whereas for Brentano there is no sharp distinction between ‘intuitions’ and concepts, Husserl reinstates that this way of thinking is that the content is immanent, existing within the mental act, and anything external drops out as secondary or irrelevant to the intrinsic nature of the mental state. The problem is nonetheless of reconciling the subjective or psychological nature of mental life with its objective and logical content preoccupied Husserl from this time onwards. Husserl eventually abandoned his attempt to keep both a subjective and a naturalistic approach to knowledge together, abandoning the naturalism in favour of a kind of ‘transcendentalism’ idealism’.
`Nietzsche, in an effort to subvert the epistemological authority of scientific knowledge, sought to legitimatize a division between mind and world much starker than that originally envisioned by Descartes. What is not as widely known, however, is that Nietzsche and other seminal figures in the history of philosophical postmodernism were very much aware of an epistemological crisis in scientific thought than arose much earlier that, that occasioned by wave-particle dualism in quantum physics. This crisis resulted from attempts during the last three decades of the nineteenth century to develop a logically - consistent definition of number and arithmetic that would serve to reinforce the classical view of correspondence between mathematical theory and physical reality. As it turned out, these efforts resulted in paradoxes of a recursion and -reference that threatened to undermine both the efficacy of this correspondence and the privileged character of scientific knowledge.
Nietzsche appealed to this crisis in an effort to reinforce his assumption that, the absence of ontology, all knowledge (including scientific knowledge) was grounded only in human consciousness. As the crisis continued, a philosopher trained in higher mathematics and physics, Edmund Husserl, attempted to preserve the classical view of correspondence between mathematical theory and physical reality by deriving the foundation of logic and number from consciousness in ways that would preserve -consistency and rigour. Even so, this effort to ground mathematical physics in human consciousness, or in human subjective reality, was no trivial matter. It represented a direct link between these early challenges and the efficacy of classical epistemology and the tradition in philosophical thought that culminated in philosophical postmodernism. Nietzsche’s emotionally charged decence of intellectual freedom and his radical empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought.
`Friedrich Nietzsche is openly pessimistic about the possibility of knowledge. ‘We simply lack any organ for knowledge, for ‘truth’: We know (or believe or imagine) just as much as may be useful in the interests of the human herd, the species: and even what is called ‘utility’ is ultimately also a mere belief, something imaginary and perhaps precisely that most calamitous stupidity of which we will not perish some day’ (The Gay Science).
This position is very radical, Nietzsche does not simply deny that knowledge, construed as the adequate representation of the world by the intellect, exists. He also refuses the pragmatist identification of knowledge and truth with usefulness: he writes that we think we know what we think is useful, and that we can be quite wrong about the latter.
Nietzsche’s view, his ‘Perspectivism’, depends on his claim that there is no sensible conception of a world independent of human interpretation and to which interpretations would correspond if hey were to constitute knowledge. He sums up this highly controversial position in The Will to Power: ‘Facts are precisely what there is not. Only interpretation’.
It is often claimed that Perspectivism is -undermining. If the thesis that all views are interpretations is true then, it is argued there is at least one view that is not an interpretation. If, on the other hand, the thesis is it an interpretation, then there is no reason to believe that it is true, and it follows again that nit every view is an interpretation.
Yet this refutation assumes that if a view, like Perspectivism, is an interpretation it is wrong. This is not the case. To call any view, including Perspectivism, an interpretation is to say that it can be wrong, which is true of all views, and that is not a sufficient refutation. To show the Perspectivism is literally false producing another view superior to it on specific epistemological grounds is necessary.
Perspectivism does not deny that particular views can be true. Like some versions of cotemporary anti-realism, its attributional approach for ‘truth in relation to facts’ specified internally those approaches themselves. But it refuses to envisage a single independent set of facts, To be accounted for by all theories. Thus Nietzsche grants the truth of specific scientific theories does, however, deny that a scientific interpretation can possibly be ‘the only justifiable interpretation of the world’ (The Gay Science): Neither the facts that science addresses nor the methods it employs are privileged. Scientific theories serve the purposes for which hey have been devised, but these have no priority over the many other purposes of human life. The existence of many purposes and needs relative to which the value of theories is established-another crucial element of Perspectivism is sometimes thought to imply a reason relative, according to which no standards for evaluating purposes and theories can be devised. This is correct only in that Nietzsche denies the existence of single set of standards for determining epistemic value, but holds that specific views can be compared with and evaluated in relation to one another the ability to use criteria acceptable in particular circumstances does not presuppose the existence of criteria applicable in all. Agreement is therefore not always possible, since individuals may sometimes differ over the most fundamental issues dividing them.
Still, Nietzsche would not be troubled by this fact, which his opponents too also have to confront only he would argue, to suppress it by insisting on the hope that all disagreements are in particular eliminable even if our practice falls woefully short of the ideal. Nietzsche abandons that ideal. He considers irresoluble disagreement and essential part of human life.
Knowledge for Nietzsche finds its point reference by the idea of the ‘given’ basis beyond which its conferring material and of a rational defensible theory of confirmation and inference. That it is based on desire and bodily needs more than social refinement’s Perspectives are to be judged not from their relation to the absolute but on the basis of their effects in a specific era. The possibility of any truth beyond such a local, pragmatic one becomes a problem in Nietzsche, since either a noumenal realm or a historical synthesis exists to provide an absolute criterion of adjudication for competing truth claims: what gets called truths are simply beliefs that have been for so long that we have forgotten their genealogy? In these Nietzsche reverses the Enlightenment dictum that truth is the way to liberation by suggesting that trying classes in as far as they are considered absolute for debate and conceptual progress and cause as opposed to any ambient behaviour toward the ease of which backwardness and unnecessary misery. Nietzsche moves back and forth without revolution between the positing of trans-histories; truth claims, such as his claim about the will to power, and a kind of epistemic nihilism that calls into question not only the possibility of truth but the need and desire of it as well. However, perhaps what is most important, Nietzsche introduces the notion that truth is a kind of human practice, in a game whose rules are contingent rather than necessary it. The evaluation of truth claims should be based of their strategic efforts, not their ability to represent a reality conceived of as separately autonomous than that of human influence, for Nietzsche the view that all truth is truth from or within a particular perspective. The perspective may be a general human pin of view, set by such things as the nature of our sensory apparatus, or it may be thought to be bound by culture, history, language, class or gender. Since there may be many perspectives, there are also different families of truth. The term is frequently applied to Nietzsche’s philosophy.
The best-known disciple of Husserl was Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and the work of both figures greatly influenced that of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, the deconstructionist’s Jacques Lacan, Roland Bathes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, this direct linkage among the nineteenth-century crises about epistemological foundations of physics and the origins of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form.
Of Sartre’s main philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, Sartre examines the relationships between Being For-it (consciousness) and Being In-it (the non-conscious world). He rejects central tenets of the rationalalist and empiricist traditions, calling the view that the mind or is a thing or substance. ‘Descartes’s substantialist illusion’, and claiming also that consciousness dos not contain ideas or representations . . . are idolist invented by the psychologists. Sartre also attacks idealism in the forms associated with Berkeley and Kant, and concludes that his account of the relationship between consciousness and the world is neither realist nor idealist.
Sartre also discusses Being For-others, which comprises the aspects of experience about interactions with other minds. His views are subtle: Roughly, he holds that one’s awareness of others is constituted by feelings of shame, pride, and so on.
Sartre’s rejection of ideas, and the denial of idealism, appear to commit him to direct realism in the theory of perception. This is neither inconsistent with his claim as been non-realist nor idealist, since by ‘realist’ he means views that allow for the mutual independence or in-principle separability of mind and world. Against this Sartre emphasizes, after Heidegger, that perceptual experience has an active dimension, in hat it is a way of interacting and dealing with the world, than a way of merely contemplating it (‘activity, as spontaneous, unreflecting consciousness, constitutes a certain existential stratum in the world’). Consequently, he holds that experience is richer, and open to more aspects of the world, than empiricist writers customarily claim:
When In run after a streetcar . . . there is consciousness of-the-streetcar-having-to-be-overtaken, etc., . . . In am then plunged into the world of objects, it is they that constitute the unity of my consciousness, it is they that present themselves with values, with attractive and repellent qualities . . . Relatedly, he insists that In experience material things as having certain potentialities -for-me (’nothingness’). In see doors and bottles as openable, bicycles as ridable (these matters are linked ultimately to the doctrine of extreme existentialist freedom). Similarly, if my friend is not where In expect to meet her, then In experience her absence ‘as a real event’.
These Phenomenological claims are striking and compelling, but Sartre pays insufficient attention to such things as illusions and hallucinations, which are normally cited as problems for direct realists. In his discussion of mental imagery, however, he describes the act of imaging as a ‘transformation’ of ‘psychic material’. This connects with his views that even a physical image such as a photograph of a tree does not figure as an object of consciousness when it is experienced as a tree-representation (than as a piece of coloured cards). Nonetheless, the fact remains that the photograph continues to contribute to the character of the experience. Given this, seeing how Sartre avoids positing a mental analogue of a photograph for episodes of mental imaging is hard, and harder still to reconcile this with his rejection of visual representations. If ones image is regarded as debased and the awareness of awakening is formally received as a differential coefficient of perceptual knowledge, but this merely rises once more the issue of perceptual illusion and hallucination, and the problems of reconciling them are dialectally the formalization built upon realism.
Much of Western religion and philosophical thought since the seventeenth century has sought to obviate this prospect with an appeal to ontology or to some conception of God or Being. Yet we continue to struggle, as philosophical postmodernism attests, with the terrible prospect by Nietzsche-we are locked in a prison house of our individual subjective realities in a universe that is as alien to our thought as it is to our desires. This universe may seem comprehensible and knowable in scientific terms, and science does seek in some sense, as Koyré puts it, to ‘find a place for everything.’ Nonetheless, the ghost of Descartes lingers in the widespread conviction that science does not provide a ‘place for man’ or for all that we know as distinctly human in subjective reality.
Nonetheless, after The Gay Science (1882) began the crucial exploration of -mastery. The relations between reason and power, and the revelation of the unconscious striving after power that provide the actual energy for the apparent -denial of the ascetic and the martyred were during this period that Nietzsche’s failed relationship with Lou Salome resulted in the emotional crisis from which Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883-5, translates as, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and signals a recovery. This work is frequently regarded as Nietzsche’s masterpiece. It was followed by Jenseits von Gut and Böse, 1887 translates as, Beyond Good and Evil, and Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887 and translates to, The Genealogy of Moral.
In Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-85), Friedrich Nietzsche introduced in eloquent poetic prose the concepts of the death of God, the superman, and the will to power. Vigorously attacking Christianity and democracy as moralities for the ‘weak herd’, he argued for the ‘natural aristocracy’ of the superman who, driven by the ‘will to power’, celebrates life on earth rather than sanctifying it for some heavenly reward. Such a heroic man of merit has the courage to ‘live dangerously’ and thus rise above the masses, developing his natural capacity for the creative use of passion.
Also known as radical theology, this movement flourished in the mid 1960s. As a theological movement it never attracted a large following, did not find a unified expression, and passed off the scene as quickly and dramatically as it had arisen. There is even disagreement as to whom its major representatives were. Some identify two, and others three or four. Although small, the movement attracted attention because it was a spectacular symptom of the bankruptcy of modern Theology and because it was a journalistic phenomenon. The very statement "God is dead" was tailor-made for journalistic exploitation. The representatives of the movement effectively used periodical articles, paperback books, and the electronic media. This movement gave expression to an idea that had been incipient in Western philosophy and theology for some time, the suggestion that the reality of a transcendent God at best could not be known and at worst did not exist at all. Philosopher Kant and theologian Ritschl denied that one could have a theoretical knowledge of the being of God. Hume and the empiricist for all practical purposes restricted knowledge and reality to the material world as perceived by the five senses. Since God was not empirically verifiable, the biblical world view was said to be mythological and unacceptable to the modern mind. Such atheistic existentialist philosophers as Nietzsche despaired even of the search of God; it was he who coined the phrase "God is dead" almost a century before the death of God theologians.
Mid-twentieth century theologians not associated with the movement also contributed to the climate of opinion out of which death of God theologies emerged. Rudolf Bultmann regarded all elements of the supernaturalistic, theistic world view as mythological and proposed that Scripture be demythologized so that it could speak its message to the modern person.
Paul Tillich, an avowed anti supernaturalist, said that the only nonsymbiotic statement that could be made about God was that he was being it. He is beyond essence and existence; therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him. It is more appropriate to say God does not exist. At best Tillich was a pantheist, but his thought borders on atheism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (whether rightly understood or not) also contributed to the climate of opinion with some fragmentary but tantalizing statements preserved in Letters and Papers from Prison. He wrote of the world and man ‘coming of age’, of ‘religionless Christianity’, of the ‘world without God’, and of getting rid of the ‘God of the gaps’ and getting along just as well as before. It is not always certain what Bonhoeffer meant, but if nothing else, he provided a vocabulary that later radical theologians could exploit.
It is clear, then, that as startling as the idea of the death of God was when proclaimed in the mid 1960s, it did not represent as radically a departure from recent philosophical and theological ideas and vocabulary as might superficially appears.
Just what was death of God Theology? The answers are as varied as those who proclaimed God's demise. Since Nietzsche, theologians had occasionally used "God is dead" to express the fact that for an increasing number of people in the modern age God seems to be unreal. Nonetheless, the idea of God's death began to have special prominence in 1957 when Gabriel Vahanian published a book entitled God is Dead. Vahanian did not offer a systematic expression of death of God theology. Instead, he analysed those historical elements that contributed to the masses of people accepting atheism not so much as a theory but as a way of life. Vahanian him did not believe that God was dead. Still, he urged that there be a form of Christianity that would recognize the contemporary loss of God and exert its influence through what was left. Other proponents of the death of God had the same assessment of God's status in contemporary culture, but were to draw different conclusions.
Thomas J. Altizer believed that God had really died. Nonetheless, Altizer often spoke in exaggerated and dialectic language, occasionally with heavy overtones of Oriental mysticism. Sometimes knowing exactly what Altizer meant when he spoke in dialectical opposites is difficult such as "God is dead, thank God" Apparently the real meaning of Altizer's belief that God had died is to be found in his belief in God's immanence. To say that God has died is to say that he has ceased to exist as a transcendent, supernatural being. Alternately, he has become fully immanent in the world. The result is an essential identity between the human and the divine. God died in Christ in this sense, and the process has continued time and again since then. Altizer claims the church tried to give God life again and put him back in heaven by its doctrines of resurrection and ascension. However, the traditional doctrines about God and Christ must be repudiated because man has discovered after nineteen centuries that God does not exist. Christians must even now will the death of God by which the transcendent become immanent.
For William Hamilton the death of God describes the event many have experienced over the last two hundred years. They no longer accept the reality of God or the meaningfulness of language about him. Non theistic explanations have been substituted for theistic ones. This trend is irreversible, and everyone must come to terms with the historical-cultural -death of God. God's death must be affirmed and the secular world embraced as normative intellectually and good ethically. Doubtless, Hamilton was optimistic about the world, because he was optimistic about what humanity could do and was doing to solve its problems.
Paul van Buren is usually associated with death of God theology, although he him disavowed this connection. Yet, his disavowal seems hollow in the light of his book The Secular Meaning of the Gospel and his article "Christian Education Post Mortem Dei." In the former he accepts empiricism and the position of Bultmann that the world view of the Bible is mythological and untenable to modern people. In the latter he proposes an approach to Christian education that does not assume the existence of God but does assume ‘the death of God’ and that ‘God is gone’. Van Buren was concerned with the linguistic aspects of God's existence and death. He accepted the premise of empirical analytic philosophy that real knowledge and meaning can be conveyed only by language that is empirically verifiable. This is the fundamental principle of modern secularists and is the only viable option in this age. If only empirically verifiable language is meaningful, by that very fact all language that refers to or assumes the reality of God is meaningless, since one cannot verify God's existence by any of the five senses. Theism, belief in God, is not only intellectually untenable, it is meaningless. In, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel van Buren seeks to reinterpret the Christian faith without reference to God. One searches the book in vain for even one clue, that van Buren is anything but a secularist trying to translate Christian ethical values into that language game. There is a decided shift in van Buren's later book Discerning the Way, however.
In retrospect, there was clearly no single death of God Theology, only death of God theologies. Their real significance was that modern theology, by giving up the essential elements of Christian belief in God, had logically led to what was really antitheologies. When the death of God theologies passed off the scene, the commitment to secularism remained and manifested it in other forms of secular theology in the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Nietzsche is unchallenged as the most insightful and powerful critic of the moral climate of the 19th century (and of what of it remains in ours). His exploration of unconscious motivation anticipated Freud. He is notorious for stressing the ‘will to power’ that is the basis of human nature, the ‘resentment’ that comes when it is denied its basis in action, and the corruptions of human nature encouraged by religion, such as Christianity, that feed on such resentment. Yet the powerful human being who escape all this, the Ubermensch, is not the ‘blood beast’ of later fascism: It is a human being who has mastered passion, risen above the senseless flux, and given creative style to his or her character. Nietzsche’s free spirits recognize themselves by their joyful attitude to eternal return. He frequently presents the creative artist rather than the warlord as his best exemplar of the type, but the disquieting fact remains that he seems to leave him no words to condemn any uncaged beast of prey whose best to find their style by exerting repulsive power find their style by exerting repulsive power over others. This problem is no t helped by Nietzsche’s frequently expressed misogyny, although in such matters the interpretation of his many-layered and ironic writings is no always straightforward. Similarly y, such Anti-Semitism as has been found in his work is balanced by an equally vehement denunciation of anti-Semitism, and an equal or greater dislike of the German character of his time.
Nietzsche’s current influence derives not only from his celebration of will, but more deeply from his scepticism about the notions of truth and act. In particular, he anticipated any of the central tenets of postmodernism: an aesthetic attitude toward the world that sees it as a ‘text’; the denial of facts; the denial of essences; the celebration of the plurality of interpretation and of the fragmented, as well as the downgrading of reason and the politicization of discourse. All awaited rediscoveries in the late 20th century. Nietzsche also has the incomparable advantage over his followers of being a wonderful stylist, and his Perspectivism is echoed in the shifting array of literary devices-humour, irony, exaggeration, aphorisms, verse, dialogue, parody-with that he explores human life and history.
Yet, it is nonetheless, that we have seen, the origins of the present division that can be traced to the emergence of classical physics and the stark Cartesian division between mind and the bodily world is two separate substances, the is as it happened associated with a particular body, but is -subsisting, and capable of independent existence, yet Cartesian duality, much as the ‘ego’ that we are tempted to imagine as a simple unique thing that makes up our essential identity, but, seemingly sanctioned by this physics. The tragedy of the Western mind, well represented in the work of a host of writers, artists, and intellectual, is that the Cartesian division was perceived as uncontrovertibly real.
Beginning with Nietzsche, those who wished to free the realm of the mental from the oppressive implications of the mechanistic world-view sought to undermine the alleged privileged character of the knowledge called physicians with an attack on its epistemological authority. After Husserl tried and failed to save the classical view of correspondence by grounding the logic of mathematical systems in human consciousness, this not only resulted in a view of human consciousness that became characteristically postmodern. It also represents a direct link with the epistemological crisis about the foundations of logic and number in the late nineteenth century that foreshadowed the epistemological crisis occasioned by quantum physics beginning in the 1920's. This, as a result in disparate views on the existence of oncology and the character of scientific knowledge that fuelled the conflict between the two.
If there were world enough and time enough, the conflict between each that both could be viewed as an interesting artifact in the richly diverse coordinative systems of higher education. Nevertheless, as the ecological crisis teaches us, the ‘old enough’ capable of sustaining the growing number of our life firms and the ‘time enough’ that remains to reduce and reverse the damage we are inflicting on this world ae rapidly diminishing. Therefore, put an end to the absurd ‘betweeness’ and go on with the business of coordinate human knowledge in the interest of human survival in a new age of enlightenment that could be far more humane and much more enlightened than any has gone before.
It now, which it is, nonetheless, that there are significant advances in our understanding to a purposive mind. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to cognition that draws primarily on ideas from cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics and logic. Some philosophers may be cognitive scientists, and others concern themselves with the philosophy of cognitive psychology and cognitive science. Since inauguration of cognitive science these disciplines have attracted much attention from certain philosophers of mind. This has changed the character of philosophy of mind, and there are areas where philosophical work on the nature of mind is continuous with scientific work. Yet, the problems that make up this field concern the ways of ‘thinking’ and ‘mental properties’ are those that these problems are standardly and traditionally regarded within philosophy of mind than those that emerge from the recent developments in cognitive science. The cognitive aspect is what has to be understood is to know what would make the sentence true or false. It is frequently identified with the truth cognition of the sentence. Justly as the scientific study of precesses of awareness, thought, and mental organization, often by means of computer modelling or artificial intelligence research. Contradicted by the evidence, it only has to do with is structure and the way it functioned, that is just because a theory does not mean that the scientific community currently accredits it. Generally, there are many theories, though technically scientific, have been rejected because the scientific evidence is strangely against it. The historical enquiry into the evolution of -consciousness, developing from elementary sense experience too fully rational, free, thought processes capable of yielding knowledge the presented term, is associated with the work and school of Husserl. Following Brentano, Husserl realized that intentionality was the distinctive mark of consciousness, and saw in it a concept capable of overcoming traditional mind-body dualism. The study of consciousness, therefore, maintains two sides: a conscious experience can be regarded as an element in a stream of consciousness, but also as a representative of one aspect or ‘profile’ of an object. In spite of Husserl’s rejection of dualism, his belief that there is a subject-matter lingering back, behind and yet remaining after each era of time, or bracketing of the content of experience, associates him with the priority accorded to elementary experiences in the parallel doctrine of phenomenalism, and phenomenology has partly suffered from the eclipse of that approach to problems of experience and reality. However, later phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty do full justice to the world-involving nature of Phenomenological theories are empirical generalizations of data experience, or manifest in experience. More generally, the phenomenal aspects of things are the aspects that show themselves, than the theoretical aspects that are inferred or posited in order to account for them. They merely described the recurring process of nature and do not refer to their cause or that, in the words of J.S. Mill, ‘objects are the permanent possibilities of sensation’. To inhabit a world of independent, external objects are, on this view, to be the subject of actual and possible orderly experiences. Espoused by Russell, the view issued in a programme of translating talk about physical objects and their locations into talking about possible experience. The attempt is widely supposed to have failed, and the priority the approach gives to experience has been much criticized. It is more common in contemporary philosophy to see experience as it a construct from the actual way of the world, than the other way round.
Phenomenological theories are also called ‘scientific laws’ ‘physical laws’ and ‘natural laws.’ Newton’s third law is one example, saying that, every action ha an equal and opposite reaction. ‘Explanatory theories’ attempt to explain the observations rather than generalized them. Whereas laws are descriptions of empirical regularities, explanatory theories are conceptual constrictions to explain why the data exit, for example, atomic theory explains why we see certain observations, the same could be said with DNA and relativity, Explanatory theories are particularly helpful in such cases where the entities (like atoms, DNA . . . ) cannot be directly observed.
What is knowledge? How does knowledge get to have the content it has? The problem of defining knowledge in terms of true belief plus some favoured relation between the believer and the facts begun with Plato, in that knowledge is true belief plus logos, as it is what enables us to apprehend the principle and firms, i.e., an aspect of our own reasoning.
What makes a belief justified for what measures of belief is knowledge? According to most epistemologists, knowledge entails belief, so that to know that such and such is the case. None less, there are arguments against all versions of the thesis that knowledge requires having a belief-like attitude toward the known. These arguments are given by philosophers who think that knowledge and belief or facsimile, are mutually incompatible (the incompatibility thesis) or by ones who say that knowledge does not entail belief, or vice versa, so that each may exist without the other, but the two may also coexist (the separability thesis). The incompatibility thesis that hinged on the equation of knowledge with certainty. The assumption that we believe in the truth of claim we are not certain about its truth. Given that belief always involves uncertainty, while knowledge never does, believing something rules out the possibility of knowledge knowing it. Again, given to no reason to grant that states of belief are never ones involving confidence. Conscious beliefs clearly involve some level of confidence, to suggest otherwise, that we cease to believe things about which we are completely confident is bizarre.
A.D. Woozley (1953) defends a version of the separability thesis, that Woozley’s version that deals with psychological certainty than belief per se, is that knowledge can exist without confidence about the item known, although knowledge might also be accompanied by confidence as well. Woozley says, ‘what In can do, where what In can do may include answering questions.’ On the basis of this remark he suggests that even when people are unsure of the truth of a claim, they might know that the claim is true. We unhesitatingly attribute knowledge to people that correct responses on examinations if those people show no confidence in their answers. Woozley has given to acknowledge that it would be odd for those who lack confidence to claim knowledge. Saying it would be peculiar, ‘In know it is correct.’ But this tension; still ‘In know is correct.’ Woozley explains, using a distinction between condition under which are justified in making a claim (such as a claim to know something) and conditioned under which the claim we make is true. While ‘In know such and such’ might be true even if In answered whether such and such holds, nonetheless claiming that ‘In know that such should be inappropriate for me and such unless In was sure of the truth of my claim.’
Colin Redford (1966) extends Woozley’s defence of the separability thesis. In Redford’s view, not only in knowledge compatible with the lacking of certainty, it is also compatible with a complete lack of belief. He argues by example, in this one example, Jean had forgotten that he learned some English history years prior and yet he is able to give several correct responses to questions such as, ‘When did the Battle of Hastings occur?’ since he forgot that the battle of Hastings took place in 1066 in history, he considers his correct response to be no more than guesses. Thus when he says that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066 he would deny having the belief that the Battle of Hasting took place in 1066.
Those who agree with Radford’s defence of the separation thesis will probably think of belief as an inner state that can be directed through introspection. That Jean lacks’ beliefs out English history are plausible on this Cartesian picture since Jean does not find him with the belief out of which the English history when with any beliefs about English history when he seeks them out. One might criticize Radford, however, by rejecting the Cartesian view of belief. One could argue that some beliefs are thoroughly unconscious. For example, (1859), according to which having beliefs is a matter of the way people are disposed to behave (and has not Radford already adopted a behaviourist conception of knowledge?) Since Jean gives the correct response when queried, a form of verbal behaviour, a behaviourist would be tempted to credit him with the belief that the battle of Hastings occurred in 1066.
Once, again, but the jargon is attributable to different attitudinal values. AS, D. M. Armstrong (1973) makes a different task against Radford. Jean does know that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. Armstrong will grant Radford that points, which in fact, Armstrong suggests that Jean believe that 1066 is not the actual date that did occur of the Battle of Hastings. For Armstrong parallels the belief of such and such is just possible bu t no more than just possible with the belief that such and such is not the case. However, Armstrong insists Jean also believe that the Battle did occur in 1066. After all, had Jean been mistaught that the Battle occurred in 1066, and had he forgotten being ‘taught’ this and subsequently ‘guessed’ that it took place in 10690, we would surely describe the situation as one in which Jean’ false belief about te Battle became a memory trace that was causally responsible or his guess. Thus while Jean consciously believes that the Battle did not occur in 1066, unconsciously he does believe it occurred in 1066. So after all, Radford does not have a counterexample to the claim that knowledge entails belief.
Suppose that Jean’s memory had been sufficiently powerful to produce the relevant belief. As Radford says, Jan has every reason to suppose that his response is mere guesswork, and so he has every reason to consider his belief false. His belief would be an irrational one, and hence one about whose truth Jean would be ignorant.
The attempt to understand the conceptual representation that is involved in religious belief, existence, necessity, fate, creation, sun, justice, Mercy, Redemption, God. Until the 20th century the history of western philosophy is closely intertwined with attempts to make sense of aspect of pagan, Jewish or Christian religion, while in other tradition such as Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism, there is even less distinction between religious and philosophical enquiry. The classic problem of conceiving an appropriate object of religious belief is that of understanding whether any term can be predicated of it: Does it make to any sense of talking about its creating to things, willing events, or being one thing or many? The via negativa of Theology is to claim that God can only be known by denying ordinary terms of any application (or them); Another influential suggestion is that ordinary term only apply metaphorically, sand that there is in hope of cashing the metaphors. Once a description of a Supreme Being is hit upon, there remains the problem of providing any reason for supposing that anything answering to the description exists. The medieval period was the high-water mark-for purported proof of the existence of God, such as the Five-Ays of Aquinas, or the ontological argument of such proofs have fallen out of general favour since the 18th century, although theories still sway many people and some philosophers.
Generally speaking, even religious philosophers (or perhaps, they especially) have been wary of popular manifestations of religion. Kant, him a friend of religious faith, nevertheless distinguishes various perversions: Theosophy (using transcendental conceptions that confuses reason), demonology (indulging an anthropomorphic, mode of representing the Supreme Being), theurgy (a fanatical delusion that feeling can be communicated from such a being, or that we can exert an influence on it), and idolatry, or a superstition’s delusion the one can make one acceptable to his Supreme Being by order by means than that of having the moral law at heart (Critique of judgement) these warm conversational tendencies have, however, been increasingly important in modern Theology.
Since Feuerbach there has been a growing tendency for philosophy of religion either to concentrate upon the social and anthropological dimension of religious belief, or to treat a manifestation of various explicable psychological urges. Another reaction is retreat into a celebration of purely subjective existential commitments. Still, the ontological arguments continue to attach attention. Modern anti-fundamentalists trends in epistemology are not entirely hostile to cognitive claims based on religious experience.
Still, the problem f reconciling the subjective or psychological nature of mental life with its objective and logical content preoccupied from of which is next of the problem was elephantine Logische untersuchungen (trans. as Logical Investigations, 1070). To keep a subjective and a naturalistic approach to knowledge together. Abandoning the naturalism in favour of a kind of transcendental idealism. The precise nature of his change is disguised by a penchant for new and impenetrable terminology, but the ‘bracketing’ of eternal questions for which are to a great extent acknowledged implications of a solipistic, disembodied Cartesian ego is its starting-point, with it thought of as inessential that the thinking subject is ether embodied or surrounded by others. However by the time of Cartesian Meditations (trans. as, 1960, fist published in French as Méditations Carthusianness, 1931), a shift in priorities has begun, with the embodied individual, surrounded by others, than the disembodied Cartesian ego now returned to a fundamental position. The extent to which the desirable shift undermines the programme of phenomenology that is closely identical with Husserl’s earlier approach remains unclear, until later phenomenologists such as Merleau -Ponty has worked fruitfully from the later standpoint.
Pythagoras established and was the central figure in school of philosophy, religion, and mathematics: He was apparently viewed by his followers as semi-divine. For his followers the regular solids (symmetrical three-dimensional forms in which all sides are the same regular polygon) with ordinary language. The language of mathematical and geometric forms seem closed, precise and pure. Providing one understood the axioms and notations, and the meaning conveyed was invariant from one mind to another. The Pythagoreans following which was the language empowering the mind to leap beyond the confusion of sense experience into the realm of immutable and eternal essences. This mystical insight made Pythagoras the figure from antiquity must revered by the creators of classical physics, and it continues to have great appeal for contemporary physicists as they struggle with the epistemological of the quantum mechanical description of nature.
Pythagoras (570 Bc) was the son of Mn esarchus of Samos ut, emigrated (531 Bc) to Croton in southern Italy. Here he founded a religious society, but were forces into exile and died at Metapomtum. Membership of the society entailed -disciplined, silence and the observance of his taboos, especially against eating flesh and beans. Pythagoras taught the doctrine of metempsychosis or the cycle of reincarnation, and remained as to remember their former existence. The soul, which as its own divinity and may have existed as an animal or plant, can, however gain release by a religious dedication to study, after which it may rejoin the universal world-soul. Pythagoras is usually, but doubtfully, accredited with having discovered the basis of acoustics, the numerical ratios underlying the musical scale, thereby intimating the arithmetical interpretation of nature. This tremendous success inspired the view that the whole of the cosmos should be explicable in terms of harmonia or number. The view represents a magnificent brake from the Milesian attempt to ground physics on a conception shared by all things, and to concentrate instead on form, meaning that physical nature receives an approachable foundation in different geometric breaks. The view is vulgarized in the doctrine usually attributed to Pythagoras, that all things are number. However, the association of abstract qualitites with numbers, but reached remarkable heights, with occult attachments for instance, between justice and the number four, and mystical significance, especially of the number ten, cosmologically Pythagoras explained the origin of the universe in mathematical terms, as the imposition of limits on the limitless by a kind of injection of a unit. Followers of Pythagoras included Philolaus, the earliest cosmosologist known to have understood that the earth is a moving planet. It is also likely that the Pythagoreans discovered the irrationality of the square root of two.
The Pythagoreans considered numbers to be among te building blocks of the universe. In fact, one of the most central of the beliefs of Pythagoras mathematical, his inner circle, was that reality was mathematical in nature. This made numbers valuable tools, and over time even the knowledge of a number’s name came to be associated with power. If you could name something you had a degree of control over it, and to have power over the numbers was to have power over nature.
One, for example, stood for the mind, emphasizing its Oneness. Two was opinion, taking a step away from the singularity of mind. Three was wholeness (whole needs a beginning, a middle and its ending to be more than a one-dimensional point), and four represented the stable squareness of justice. Five was marriage-being the sum of three and two, the first odd (male) and even (female) numbers. (Three was the first odd number because the number one was considered by the Greeks to be so special that it could not form part of an ordinary grouping of numbers).
It should be noted that Murray wrote his book in 1964 when communism was still perceived by many as the world’s greatest threat. Had he written it a few years later he may have decided to call his atheist of communist world Revolution something else. Evidently, what he is truly talking about is any philosophy that suggests human beings can create a utopian world completely on their own. Nowadays we might refer to this as the atheist of the techno-revolution, or the atheist of humanism-which, again, values our expectation that our own inventiveness will save us.
The second kind of atheist, the atheist of the Theatre, refers to the sort of person who simply tries to exist in a godless world. The atheist of the Theatre is a tragic character who wants the best for the world but feels helpless to do much about it and is ultimately reduced to a mere spectator. "His mind is full of darkness," writes Murray, "it is oppressed with a sense of the finitude and fragility of existence; it shivers before the un-predictabilities of history."10 Unlike the atheist of the Revolution who links freedom with freedom from poverty, the atheist of the Theatre wants freedom from the angst of a purposeless and uncertain existence. Such a person can only accomplish this through -invention or -determination. This, however, cannot be accomplished so long as God lives. If God is present, then God is the inventor of the human being who has no choice but to adhere to a predetermined nature and destiny. So, in order for the atheist of the Theatre to gain the freedom to chart one’s own destiny, God must be dismissed.
As different as these two types may appear, Murray suggests they share several characteristics in common. Firstly, they both take the presence of evil as evidence of God’s nonexistence. Secondly, they both accept the death of God, that is, belief in God is irrelevant. Thirdly, atheism is a postulate they feel obliged to express. This is to say that not only do they not believe in God, but they feel such a belief is somehow harmful, primarily because it is detrimental to freedom.
Of course, the deaths of God pundits have not been met without plenty of criticism. Nonetheless, they simply respond by claiming their critics choose to avoid the modern condition by clinging to archaic and meaningless fantasies. As Thomas Ogletree has written concerning The Death of God Controversy, "The refusal of God’s death amounted to a nostalgic desire to avoid the present moment by a flight into a past that is no more. The notion of God’s death has become so prominent and argument that there have been several Deaths of God theologians who have attempted to abstract positive meaning from Christianity while accepting the death of God philosophy. Ogletree’s book introduces us to three such theologians, William Hamilton, Paul Van Buren and Thomas J.J. Altizer.
For Hamilton, the death of God implies that God can no longer be thought of as a "need-fulfiller and problem-solver." He rejects the idea that God is a kind of candy dispenser or "cosmic bellhop," ever ready to attend to humanity’s needs. Unlike those Christians who cling to their idea of God, even in the wake of divine irrelevance, by rejecting contemporary society and holding to tradition, Hamilton seems to have found a way to have his cake and eat it too. For Hamilton, the Christian’s task is to find God by returning to society and becoming active in the alleviation of human suffering. This is not entirely different from the idea expounded by Paul Van Buren who wrote, ". . . . If In understand the nature and development of Christianity, In would want to argue that what Christianity is basically about is a certain form of life-patterns of human existence, norms of human attitudes, and dispositions and moral behaviour."14 For these two theologians there are something in Christianity that presents a viable, even necessary, way of living even in the wake of God’s death.
Thomas Altizer takes the matter as step further by insinuating that God must die in order for Jesus to live. The modern problem of God might best be illustrated in the argument that only God is or only the world is-the sacred or the profane, pantheism vs. materialism. The modern atheist chooses the world, the material, the profane. "If there is one clear portal to the twentieth century," writes Altizer, "it is a passage through the death of God, the collapse of any meaning or reality lying beyond the newly discovered radical immanence of modern man, immanently dissolving even the memory or the shadow of transcendence."15 The loss of transcendence, however, is not understood by Altizer as the loss of the sacred but as the redemption of the profane. God is not killed by modern humanity, but sacrifices God- to humanity by entering into the profane world via the Christ, God made flesh. Although those who cling to Christian tradition will likely consider such a radical notion as heresy, it seems somehow comforting to think that God might somehow dwell among us, in our very suffering and profanity.
So far In have spoken as if the death of God is to be taken for granted, as if it is an undeniable fact of the modern condition. This, however, is a presupposition In am not entirely sure of. Just this week In spent several days in Washington, D.C. and had the opportunity to hear all of Kentucky’s State Representatives and U.S. Senator Jim Bunning address a large group of their constituents. Without fail, each one of them had something to say about God, mostly in reference to George W. Bush and his intention to go to war with Iraq. Congressman Ken Lucas, the only Democrat among Kentucky’s Washington delegation, asked the group to pray for Mr. Bush and concluded by saying "the Almighty is with him." Congressman Ernie Fletcher, who hopes to become the next Kentucky Governor, spoke of a presentation he attended during the Gideon Bible Society as presented by Mr. Bush in which its one-billionth printed Bible. Mr. Bush responded by assuring those present that the "Will of God" is his top priority. Representative Ann Northup referred to him as a "deeply spiritual man," and Harold Rogers publicly thanked God that Mr. Bush was in office at the time of 911. In regard to war with Iraq, Representative Ron Lewis quoted Abraham Lincoln’s reference to the Civil War by saying "the question is not whether or not God is on our side, but whether or not we are on God’s side." Finally, U.S. Senator Jim Bunning boasted about a Senate resolution supporting the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, thanked God for George W. Bush, and concluded by warning the audience that in light of pressing problems "we must keep our faith in God or we won’t survive as a people or as a nation."
Perhaps you will agree, it doesn’t sound like those who represent the people of at least one State in the Nation are atheists. The fact is that the people of the United States remain highly religious, especially compared with the rest of the Western world. According to an article in The Economist entitled The Fight for God, 47% of the people in the United States regularly attend church services, as compared with only 20% in Western Europe and 14% in Eastern Europe. What is more, is that only 2% of the population in the United States actually claims to be atheists?
Yet these statistics do not necessarily mean all of this talk about the death of God has been for not, but they serve as a framework for reinterpreting the meaning of God’s death. In would suggest that even though the idea of God lives on, the experience of God having died. In this sense the death of God may have begun much earlier than with the rise of science and technology. It was during the Patristic age of the early Church Fathers that the problem became purely ontological, that is, asking the question "What is God?" Rather than "Is God with us?" This arose over the controversy concerning Jesus’ divinity. Is he human or God? If he is God, what then is God? Tertullian tried to solve the problem with a biological and an anthropomorphic answer, claiming the Father and the Son are both part of a single organism and share the same mind and will. Origen claimed the Son (Logos) emanates from the Father in a diminished capacity. Arius taught that there was a time "when he was not," which is to say Jesus, although a perfect creature is nonetheless a creation of God. All of this became heresy after the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, after it was determined that the Father and the Son are of the same substance (homoousios), relying heavily upon Athenasius of Alexandria’s credo that the Son is like the Father in every way except for the name Father. The Nicene Creed ushered in the age of Christian scholasticism that gave birth to thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine, but it also dramatically altered the nature of the Problem of God.
Before this event the Problem of God had always been about the living God and whether or not such is God who dwells with us, rather than the distant and abstract God of theological debate. The Problem of God, which is a uniquely western theological term, is rooted deep within the Judeo/Christian tradition, beginning with the Biblical story of Moses’ encounter with the burning bush. When Moses asks God’s name, God replies, "ehyeh ser ehyeh" In am who In am. Murray understands this to mean God is present with the people.
Ancient people did not think abstractly about God. Nor did they wonder why evil and suffering were in the world. They took the existence of both for granted. What they wanted to know was whether or not God would be with them in the midst of their struggles. In Exodus, for instance, the Israelites are reported to have asked, "Is the Lord among us or not?" Murray breaks the Old Testament Problem of God into four questions, the Existential question, Is God here with us now? The Functional question, How will this God who is with us save us? The Noetic question, How is this God who is present to be known? The Onomastic question, How is this God who is present among us to be named? After Jesus came on the scene, these questions remained essentially the same, but were answered through the lens of the Christ.
This sort of question implies a desire to have intimate knowledge of the Divine. They are questions about how we ought to conduct our lives rather than about abstract thoughts and concepts. If there is any value to having a belief in God today, perhaps these sort of question ought to be at the heart of such belief, less we remain as those who would contribute to the pain and suffering of others by making war and poverty while paying intellectual lip service to an abstract notion of God. Perhaps, furthermore, the Problem of God is not a problem that is to be solved or ought to be solved. Early theologians celebrated the fact that God cannot be truly known. As Thomas Aquinas said, "One thing that remains completely unknown in this life, namely, what God is."19 Augustine said similarly, "If you have comprehended, what you have comprehended is not God." Or as Cryil of Jerusalem said, "In the things of God the confession of no knowledge is great knowledge." "It is by this ignorance, as long as life lasts, that we are best united with God," wrote Aquinas, "This is the darkness in which God dwells."
So the Problem of God remains today very much the same as it has throughout history. Even in our limited understanding and modern disbelief in the relevance of God, we want to know, in the midst of the turmoil, suffering and evil we face today, is it possible that God is with us? Or are we left alone to deal these problems completely on our own? Are we creatures of purpose and destiny, or must we choose our own way? Do we need God? In their book The Invisible Landscape, Terrence and Dennis McKenna write; Western humans have lost their sense of unity with the cosmos and with the transcendent mystery within themselves. Modern science has given us a picture of human beings as accidental products of random evolutionary processes in a universe that is it without purpose or meaning. This alienation of modern humans from the numinous ground of their beings has engendered the existentialist ethic and the contemporary preoccupation with the immediate historical situation. Humans are regarded as leading a wholly profane existence within a wholly profane time, which is within history; the reality of the sacred is denied or reduced to the level of psychology.
In the end it would seem the Problem of God is ultimately the Problem of Humanity, for it is our suffering that draws us toward the idea of God, and repels us from it.
Friedrich Nietzsche had very different opinions concerning the man known to history as Jesus Christ and his legacy, and the religion called Christianity. As a well-known philosopher of contemporary times, Nietzsche's reputation with Christianity is severely ambiguous, as a result of a "long customary" association with the Nazi Party of Germany, which, as one critic points out, is "like linking St. Francis with the Inquisition in which the order he founded played a major role." Still, despite much misunderstanding and prejudice, Nietzsche's influence on the world remains consistently strong, as "few thinkers of any age equal his influence." Nietzsche's philosophy is rooted in his own interpretation of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the history of Christianity, as he considered him the first philosopher of the "irrevocable anti-Christian era" from which all Christian and secular systems associated with Christianity would henceforth bow. Nietzsche, however, does not see this new era in the history of the world as essentially negative; he believes that he is the first of 'the new way'; and "things will be different," positively. Furthermore, one must understand Nietzsche's position on Jesus and Christianity, the most crucial part of his philosophical system, as separate issues, to appreciate completely and comprehend the rest.
To this end, Nietzsche is clear that he has different attitudes about Jesus and Christianity. This distinction is "no less than the distinction between life and death, the great 'Yes' and the decadent 'No.'" Furthermore, there is a "severance" between Jesus and the Christian tradition. This is clearly a result, according to Nietzsche, of the greediness and short-sightedness of St. Paul, who lock up Christianity so much that the religion has little in common with the ideas and teachings that its founder represented. As a consequence, Western society has gone backwards, Nietzsche writes, "everything is visibly becoming Judiazed, Christianized, moblike (what does the words matter)."
Nietzsche considers him "the atheist," whose challenges against Christianity all Christians must now face and consider. Although he admits that he is "an opponent of Christianity de riguer," Nietzsche has a distinct respect for the man Jesus. While Nietzsche does not go so far as to embrace all of the ideas and teachings of Jesus, he clearly draws a clear dichotomy between Jesus and Nazareth and "the Christ of the creeds"Cand what Nietzsche is most concerned with is the historical Jesus. The end of Nietzsche's analysis of Jesus and Christianity is a request for the reassessment of Western culture's values, especially religious values, which call for the eventual expulsion of Christianity as he knew it.
In short, Nietzsche respects and admires Jesus of Nazareth, "but denies that he has any meaning for our age" Nietzsche believes the Jewish contention that Jesus is not the Messiah and that the Messiah has not yet appeared in history. Even so, Nietzsche reveres Jesus as no other character in history, particularly because he came to know Jesus as the very opposite of Christianity. Nietzsche writes as a philologist, "The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding reality there has only been one Christian, and he died on the Cross." While leaving such an impact on the world is admirable (and a good characteristic of a Übermensch), Nietzsche "could know Jesus as the greatest and truest revolutionary in history," despite the sour legacy he left.
Despite all of this hostility, Nietzsche looked upon the symbol of the crucified Christ as “the most sublime of all symbols." Nonetheless, Jesus remains the only Christian in whom will ever have lived, yet he was crucified by mortals. The Christians were making their professed faith a weird comedy. The cross, to Nietzsche, is a "ghastly paradox" that revolves around the idea of "God of the cross." This concept is absurd to Nietzsche, who wonders how it is logical that the "mystery of an unimaginable and ultimate cruelty and -crucifixion of God for the salvation of man?" Furthermore, Nietzsche comments:
God him sacrifices him for the guilt of humankind, God him makes payment to him, God as the only being who can redeem man from what has become unredeemable for man him, the creditor sacrifices him for his debtor, out of love (one can credit that?) Out of love for his debtor-Nietzsche sees this entire concept of a crucified god as utterly ridiculous and ironic for a god to do so "out of love." While "Christianity's -sacrificing God make’s infinite its adherents' guilt and debt," Nietzsche observes, "Jesus had done away with the concept of 'guilt.'" Yet, to Nietzsche, Jesus, like him, had come "too early" and died "too young . . . not 'at the right time.'" They were both revolutionaries who were rebelling against the old ways.
Clearly, Nietzsche is interested in a historical assemblage of Jesus, who, nonetheless, left no writings, as Nietzsche had to go to the next best source, the Gospels, which he despised. Nietzsche writes that the Bible is "the greatest audacity and 'sin against the spirit' that literary Europe has on its conscience." As a result, while Jesus preached and taught about freedom, Nietzsche believed that "it was immediately transformed by those who preached it (and especially by Paul) to assert their own power."
Nietzsche is convinced that Jesus him would deny "everything that today is called Christian." Critic William Hubben argues that Jesus was literally an anarchist, who "attacked the Jewish hierarchy, the 'just' and supreme rulers," and died for these sins, absolutely not for the sins of others. Nietzsche recognized that Jesus had supposedly expelled the world from the concepts of guilt and sin, wondering, "[h]ow could he have died for the sins of others?" Furthermore, while some Christians viewed Jesus as a completely divine judge of 'the quick and the dead,' Nietzsche viewed Jesus as anything but a judge: "Jesus opposed those who judged others, and wanted to destroy the morality existing in his age" (emphasis added). Nonetheless, one can be assured that Nietzsche "reveres the life and death of Jesus." However, it is not in the same way that a traditional "Christian" reveres Jesus; as critic Walter Kaufmann writes, “instead of interpreting it [Jesus' life] as a promise of another world and another life, and instead of conceding the divinity of Jesus, Nietzsche insists: Ecce Homo! Man can live and die in a grand style, working out his own salvation instead of relying on the sacrifice of another." Nietzsche, then, does not 'believe in Jesus' in the creedal tradition, but respects him as a worthy opponent.
More specifically, Nietzsche views Jesus as his only true opponent. He closes, in the last line of his autobiographical Ecce Homo, "Have In been understood? -Dionysus verses the Crucified." In interpret this line as Nietzsche recognizing that Jesus is the highest of competitors to Nietzsche's own "Dionysian ideal for man." This statement is also meant as an ironic contrast; That is, a contrast between "the tragic life verses life under the cross": The roller-coaster, "dangerous" life of the Übermensch (as exemplified by Goethe) verses weakness.
In the sum, Nietzsche's interpretation of the life of Jesus, while suspicious, contrasts his feelings surrounding Christianity; Recognizing a major difference between the historical Jesus and the Jesus of the creeds. To this end, the events surrounding Jesus' death, rather than his resurrection becomes pivotal, as Nietzsche writes, "Jesus him could not have desired anything by his death but publicly to offer the sternest test, the proof of his teaching . . . But his disciples were far from forgiving his death." Thus, after Jesus' death, his followers asked, "Who killed him? Who was his natural enemy? This came like a flash of lightning," and their answer was, "Judaism," the ruling class. The offspring of this, Christianity, for Nietzsche became "another in a line of failed attempts to understand the teachings of the great creators and transformers of life"; in other words, the creedal, pre-modern Jesus has no relevance to a contemporary, post-modern society.
Nietzsche has an obvious dislike of Christianity because of its unfaithfulness to the teachings of its supposed founder, Jesus of Nazareth, the flawed morality of Christians, and the warped concept of the Christian God. Nietzsche calls Christianity "the religion of pity," as it represents weakness in every form of which he can think. Furthermore, churches has little influence legitimate justification for influence in the lives of humans today, as Nietzsche asks, "does the church today still have any necessary role to play? Does it still have the right to exist? Or could one do without it? Quaeritur." To this interrogative, Nietzsche answers that the "future of humanity is. Placed in jeopardy" by institutional Christianity, which "destroys the instincts out of which affirmative institutions develop." In other words, Christianity hinders the progress of humanity. What is more, Christian morality is hell-bent on defining the world as "ugly and bad," and has therefore made the world "ugly and bad." To make things worse, "Christianity has created a fictitious world," where nothing is dared to be questioned, and as a result, the world will break down-this way "must vanish" (emphasis added). To Nietzsche, Christianity is little more than an opiate, that is, as mentioned earlier, a weak religion of the herd.
It was stated above that Nietzsche believes that the only Christian died on the cross, and this is 'Christianity' in its purest sense. However, as far as Christians today know, understand, and define Christianity, Nietzsche says that there have never been any Christians: "The 'Christian' that which has been called a Christian for two millennia, is merely a psychological -misunderstanding." Nietzsche blames the 'corruption' of Christianity on the "first Christians," who created the very same institution that Jesus was rebelling against, Judaism, when they founded Christianity and the worst of these "first Christians," was Paul, as Nietzsche writes: "The life, the example, the teaching, the death, the meaning and the right of the entire Gospel nothing was left once this hate-obsessed false-coiner had grasped what alone he could make use of. Not the reality, not the historical truth!" In fact, Nietzsche argues, it was Paul who condemned Christianity to its present stagnant state by making "this indecency of an interpretation," that is, “'If Christ is not resurrected from the dead our faith is vain.'All at once the Evangel became the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the impudent doctrine of personal immortality."
Since the evolution of the Greek polis in the fourth century BC, man has attempted to live in a civilized society. Society was developed due to the common needs of commerce, and safety of the people in a relatively small geographic area. To create order out of an ancient, chaotic, tribal system, the constraints of laws were needed, and a government to enforce them. Common virtues, ethics, and morals emerged with the establishment of the Greek city-state. This made communication between the people easier and devised a valuation of what was "right" and "wrong." These valuations endured for centuries with little question, until the late nineteenth century.
Friedrick Nietzsche challenged all ideas that had not only come before him, but also those which proliferated during his own period. He "deconstructed" society and its "noble lies" in an attempt to show us that man "is something to be overcome." He attempted to debase all of society by proving values, ethics, and the like are errors of humanity. If you destroy the order of society by destroying everything it values, can any society still exist, or better yet, could the destroyer still exist within society? Would Nietzsche be comfortable in any society? To what extent can we use the hammer and still remain a part of society? These are my "question marks." In order to answer these questions, first it is necessary to determine what Nietzsche found so base in herd morality.
Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science, morality ranks "human drives and actions, [and] always express(es) the needs of a community and herd: whatever profits it." Instead of man creating his own valuations of "good" and "evil," the "herd" gives them to him, denying man of his individuality. Therefore, man becomes a "function of the herd." The word "individual" becomes a profanity, and individualism is punished with exile; "freedom of thought counted as discontentment itself."
When individualism became discontentment, guilt and conscience were created. Anytime an action damaged the "herd," it "created pangs of conscience for the individual." This overabundance of guilt destroyed man's pride and condemned him to become a "camel." The camel bears the load of his master throughout his existence, and stores his own guilt in his humps. He takes away his master's load, and anytime he drops a portion of that load, his hump stores more guilt. Herd morality does this to the individual. It forces the individual to take the burden of existence from the creators of the morality and feel guilt when they do not maintain the burden.
"The spirit of revenge: my friends that up to now, has been mankind's chief concern, and where there was suffering there was always supposed to be punishment." Nietzsche uses Socrates as primary proof of revenge, resentment, and ressentiment in morality. The poor, ordinary, construction worker received word from the Delphic oracle that "none is smarter than Socrates." Using dialectic as his method, he proceeded to question the men of Athens; "the dialectician lays on his opponent the burden of proving that he is not an idiot. He infuriates and at the same time paralyses" according to Nietzsche. Socrates used dialectic to enact his revenge on the nobility of declining Athens, and prove himself worthy of nobility. The same nobles he resented, he desired to become. He took his resentment inward and expressed it as revenge-ressentiment-and subsequently applied this universally as a virtue. Thousands of years later people are still using his methods. Why should one person's idiosyncratic virtue be applied to everyone? Zarathustra also speaks of the revenge in morality.
In the first discourse of Zarathustra, he tells the town of the Motley Cow, "fire of love and fire of anger glow in the name of all virtues." This is not love of man, or even humanity, that Nietzsche is speaking of. Rather, it is obedience and rule that are the "fire of love." The "fire of anger" is the resentment of the "good" against what has been done to them in the past. They have suffered therefore, everyone must, since "they knew no other way of loving their God than by nailing men to the cross." This suffering, due to resentment, is passed down the generations as tradition.
All herd morality is based in tradition. The "strength of our knowledge" doesn't lie in truth, but tradition and old mouldy volumes. Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, (one of my favourite lines) "even mold ennobles." The older a morality, virtue, or value is, the more revered it becomes. People accept postulates without proof. Why? Because it is tradition, "We have done this for generations. Therefore, it is the Truth. How can so many generations be wrong?" This attitude, based out of laziness, causes sleep.
People want the easiest road in life. So, rather than question preconceived beliefs, they simply believe for the sake of believing-they Sleep. Zarathustra speaks of the herd, "they are modest even in virtue-for they want ease." Either they go through motions and, rather than believe strongly in anything, believe "modest(ly)," or they are the martyrs, who take the burdens from everyone, "[and] go along, heavy and creaking, like carts carrying stones downhill."
Herd morality's most common basis is religion. Nietzsche writes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "God is a supposition: but I want your supposing to be grounded by conceivability." He goes on to say, "unfortunately, how weary I am of all the unattainable that is supposed to be reality." When belief in an "unattainable supposition" is the basis of a morality, isn't the morality also then unattainable, and based in supposition? And if this is true, then there is no "true" morality, and the Truth itself is then concealed from the masses.
The concealment of truth is the worst enemy of man. All of morality is based on lies. Nietzsche writes in the autobiographical Ecce Homo, "the lie of the ideal has been the curse of reality, by means of it, man's most basic instincts have become mendacious and false." Values that are "antagonistic" to the nature of man, the Dionysian nature, have been denied and labelled "evil." This "evil" of man is the "Truth." Nietzsche writes, "men have given themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven." "Evil" is not evil, rather a variation of good, there is no such thing as evil, it is a category created by man to provide a purpose to his existence-to be "good." Zarathustra states, "man first implanted values into things to maintain himself-he created a meaning of things, a human meaning." We created the values of the world, and in so doing gave it our own interpretation. We created the world in our own image. These lies have been fabricated to seal the truth of existence; existence is chaos.
Nietzsche saw that the noble lies of herd morality were set in stone, along with the error they were based upon. The error of these lies resulted in the destruction of individualism and freedom of man. This in turn, indicated the need for destruction of the stone tablets of herd morality. When men destroy these base values, transvaluations can follow. As Nietzsche says through Zarathustra, "he who has to be creator, always has to destroy." For the transvaluations to take place, Nietzsche needed to define how we should destroy and create and what type of values should be created.
To understand how the destruction should take place, Nietzsche speaks of his "hammer [which] rages fiercely against its prison." The "lion" destroys herd morality with his "hammer." The "hammer" is pure Dionysian-pure nihilism. However, an overflow of Dionysian intoxication will annihilate everything; a balance is required. Nietzsche adds the reason and wisdom of Apollo to create this balance. This reason and wisdom allows man to destroy the right moral enemies and create the right values. In this way, reason and will destroy together. Once we destroy all of man's enemies, there is one more thing to be destroyed. Zarathustra tells his disciples, "you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame." We must sacrifice ourselves because we are only prophets of the "child," or "Ubermensch," and are still in some ways decadents ourselves.
In Zarathustra's third discourse, Nietzsche gives man guidelines for the type of new values he should create. Zarathustra tells his followers, " 'This is now my way: where is yours?' Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.' For the way-does not exist!" Nietzsche wants no "parasites" or "disciples." These take the new table of values and make them universal, everyone is able to understand them and they become popular. Nietzsche wants man to create and "place above" himself his own values. In this way the values stay individual, but Nietzsche does provide, what appears to be, a general outline of the type of values we should create
Do not spare your neighbours! Man is something that must be overcome! Nietzsche is attacking the common Christian virtue: "love thy neighbour as thyself." This virtue is a show of the weak "will to power." He wants us to overcome this stale virtue and "destroy" even our neighbour. This is not to be taken literally as a killing, or mauling of our neighbour. Rather, he wants us to destroy our neighbour's values and in this sense we destroy him, showing him that man is something to be overcome
Nietzsche wants us to always "consider what [we] can give in return." We cannot desire anything for free, therefore we must fight and work for our morality. When people work hard for anything, they usually keep it close to them, and thus value it more than anything else. He expects us to do the opposite, "everything is in flux . . . [do not] firmly fix" your values and tables. We are still overcoming, and life itself is constantly overcoming, do not write your values in stone.
I will not deceive even myself," this affirmation of the will to truth is at the heart of Nietzsche's new morality. If we deceive ourselves, it is easy to fall back into the role of the "camel" and its herd morality. If we do not deceive ourselves, we shatter the "good" and the "just." They need our belief to survive, without our belief, they can't justify their existence. This is why "they hate the creator most," he destroys all that is "holy" to them.
We need to realize we will never become the"Ubermensch." We can only be prophets of his coming. As with all prophets, we must die to make way for the saviour, or as Nietzsche puts it , the "child." Unlike the "old-idol priests," who preserve their existence, Nietzsche wants us to die at the right time to prepare for the coming of the "child." The prophet can't enter the promised land, he must "go under," that is six feet under, to prepare for the coming of the "Ubermensch."
In order to create new values, the past has to be redeemed. To redeem it, a transformation of every "'It was,' until the will says: 'But I willed it thus! So shall I will it.'" is necessary? We have to "make amends to [our] children for being the children of [our] fathers”; and become yea-sayers, saying yes to all that has happened and will happen. This is Nietzsche's way of redeeming man of his facility. If we can't redeem our facility, everything we create becomes tainted by it, and reeks of the herd. The transformation releives the guilt of what has passed and transforms it into an act of the will; causing man to love life as it is, was, and will be-amor fati. Nietzsche's doctrines of eternal return and amor fati combine to redeem man's past and future, but are also the most apparently contradictory doctrines of his philosophy.
Nietzsche writes in Zarathustra, "all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us." It is necessary to keep in mind that this is not reincarnation; "I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life in the greatest things and the smallest." The "Ubermensch" becomes an impossibility-Nietzsche's own noble life due to his doctrine of eternal return. If we return eternally, our lives are already created and there is no transvaluations. How can we create new values when our lives have already been mapped out? There is no original thought just like there is no original text. As Stanley Rosen says, we are who we are "under the illusion that we have been transformed into something 'beautiful and new.'" We cannot avoid our fate, nor change it, the decision we make at every step has already been made countless times.
These doctrines devaluate the entire world, and all Being within it. Nothing is greater than another because the fate of Being is already decided. Therefore, if Nietzsche wants man to create, man has to assign his own value to the world. Man is free to create out of the chaos. The valuation becomes our own perspective, but at the same time we also create a new noble lie because the world is, in itself, worthless. Therefore, if man creates his own value in the world, why does Nietzsche assign guidelines for the creation of these values? Assigning guidelines only creates a new herd morality. Denying man of his freedom and individuality, the same things Nietzsche fought against (or so it seems) he creates. Nietzsche is attempting to relay two separate messages in one philosophy. This explains the apparent contradiction. He is trying to relay a message to the new noblemen, the strong willed, to create their own system of values, including a new noble lie. At the same time, he is attempting to speed up the decadence of the Enlightenment by preaching deconstruction. Rosen calls these different teachings Nietzsche's esoteric, or higher, and exoteric, or lower public, teachings.
The exoteric truth, the speeding up of decadence, is a "return to the cruel creativity of the Renaissance city-state or to the polis of Homeric Greece." This exoteric truth is a type of horizontal heroism, in other words, not transcendental experience, but experience for the masses. This speeds up the deconstruction of decadence, in turn making the new nobility's mission much easier.
The esoteric, or higher teaching of Nietzsche is "nature is . . . chaos, there is no eternal impediment . . . to the will to power." The will to power is defined in nature as a "natural order of rank." This rank is the expression of power as chaos, which we misperceive in order to make life "livable"- our noble lies. Yes, rank, Nietzsche created a ranking of values to replace the old ranking of the herd. Nietzsche even admits:
Its philosophy aims at an ordering of rank: not an individualistic morality. The ideas of the herd should rule in the herd-but not reach out beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their own actions.
It is only the new nobility who can "triumph over the truth precisely because [they] know that Being is chaos." As we can now see, Nietzsche did not want the populous to trans-valuational values, he wanted them to accelerate the degeneration of society. He desired a new nobility of "gods, but no God" to perform the transvaluation. These two requirements help to explain the superficial contradictions in Nietzsche's philosophy
An evaluation of Nietzsche's own life will show how he applied these philosophical differences to himself. The first thing we need to remember is, Nietzsche is a Zarathustra, not the Ubermensch, the Ubermensch was his noble lie. In his autobiographical work, Ecce Homo, he writes, "Zarathustra himself as a type, came to me-perhaps I should rather say-invaded me." As I have explained before, the Ubermensch is a becoming, but Zarathustra does not become the Ubermensch, he is the prophet, destroyer, and must die before the coming of the "child."
Nietzsche writes, "social intercourse is no small trial to my patience." He needed and enjoyed his solitude, just as Zarathustra. He had an "incontestable lack of sufficient companionship," and his "loathing of mankind . . . was always [his] greatest danger," but he needed this companionship. He wrote in 1882, following a loss of his relationships with his mother, sister, sometime girlfriend Lou Salome, and friend Paul Roe: attempts "to return 'to people' was resulting in my losing the few I still, in any sense, possessed." In his later years, Nietzsche was the ultimate "loner." He had little contact with anyone, and when he finally went mad in 1888, he was committed to a sanitarium.
Before the madness finally took total control of him, he destroyed the last few relationships he had. His delusions of grandeur had become intense. On a visit to Turin in 1888, he wrote "here in Turin I exercise a perfect fascination." Hayman writes in his biography of Nietzsche: "he thought people were reacting to him preferentially and lovingly." These delusions of grandeur caused Nietzsche to be "peremptory with friends and acquaintances." He identified himself as "the foremost mind of the period." When a fellow scholar wrote a concrete agreement against his position in The Problem of Wagner, he replied, "On questions of decadence, I am the highest court of appeal there is on earth." Finally, in a letter to his sister Elizabeth, he signed himself, "your brother, now quite a great person."
These delusions of grandeur not only destroyed any relationships he may have had, but destroyed any possibility of life within society. Nietzsche believed himself the only person of the new nobility in the age of decadence. This caused his madness.
To answer the questions I have raised regarding Nietzsche's existence in society, I have to first define society. A society is a group of people organized for some common purpose. Wherever people gather for a common purpose, they form a society. This society purports common values and judgements which are not necessarily the judgements of any other society. Society only exists as the herd, therefore there is no individual morality, but only herd morality. Even if new values are created, the powerful, or strong will to power, only create a new herd morality with new noble lies.
Nietzsche destroyed the common values of the society he lived in during the late nineteenth century, but this does not necessarily mean he can't exist in a society. He was unable to live in the society of decadence, but surely Nietzsche could live in a society based upon his noble lie, the Ubermensch. A noble lie bounded by conceivability, and ruled by "gods," his new nobility. Since he could not create his noble lie and new nobility in a period of decadence, he sacrificed himself for the coming of his children, the Ubermenschen. Since Nietzsche conceived a new society, he is not a pure nihilist, nor is he a sociopath, he is only sociopathic to what he considers a decadent society, not one he would create.
There is no creating out of the self, since the world itself has no inherent value, only inherent activity. All values based on our creation of value are illusions-our own noble lies. These are only our perception and interpretation of reality, certainly not reality, because reality is composed of infinite interpretations. We have only one. We create out of chaotic activity within the world and within ourselves. This is the only form of creation and therefore, assignment of value available to man. Therefore, each man has a different ranking of value, and society in the common sense of the word, can't exist. Due to the infinite interpretations of value. The only common thread available is man's freedom to create.
We are still a part of the Enlightenment that Nietzsche was attacking over a hundred years ago. The difference today is we know more, and are more willing to purport it, because of philosophers like Nietzsche. We scream what only others whisper. God is dead, but we have created new gods for ourselves, and these are not ourselves as Nietzsche would have wanted it. Our new gods are consumerism, money, power-all new forms of horizontal heroism. We buy clothes off a rack to look "cool”; the more money you make the better person you are; and everyone wants to control someone else, whether it is at work or in a relationship: "the omnipresence of power
Today's society does however realize the problems Nietzsche was speaking of regarding society and its herd morality. White and Hellerich, two postmodern philosophers, write in their essay "Nietzsche at the Altar: Situating the Devotee”: "This is to be a history of immanent activity not transcendent verities . . . the self-writing of a new generation of Ubermenschen and Ubermadchen." We know that actions are inherent in our being; far more valuable than espousing higher truths, "transcendent verities." Which can not even be truths because there is no universal truth because of the infinite interpretations of Truth. We become our own gods by creating our own truths. We realize the "hammer" must still be used. Deconstruction is still a common philosophy. Generation X (though I hate to use this label) has deconstructed the old herd morality to some extent, though not necessarily in the fashion which Nietzsche would have desired. Portrayed in everything from art and music to the Internet. As we close in on the twenty-first century, we are still in an age of decadence. Nietzsche's Ubermensch was and still is an unattainable possibility for society. We are still decadent
Immortalities, of provincial unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the “universal spirit.” Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. In Christianity and Islam, as well as in Judaism, the immortality promised is primarily of the spirit. The former two religions both differ from Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven.
Christianity has become, in turn, exactly what Jesus had rebelled against. In the Gay Science Nietzsche asks "And the Christians? Did they become Jews in this respect? Did they perhaps succeed?" The answer is 'yes,' as Nietzsche observes that "Christianity did aim to 'Judaize' the world."
All that happened has happened, came within the accordance with James Mark's reading of Nietzsche, as a result of Paul and the other "first Christians'" "need for . . . power" over others, forming a priestly caste, like the Jewish priestly caste before them, that has the "authority to pronounce that forgiveness, and thereby control the herd that feels the need of it." Nietzsche even goes so far to hint that Christianity was invented by the "first Christians" in revenge, by "their ignorance of superiority over ressentiment. For Nietzsche, this is the beginning of the downfall of Christianity: All the sick and sickly instinctively strive after a herd organization as a means of shaking off their dull displeasure and feeling of weakness. Moreover, Nietzsche blames the corruption of all churches, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike, on their institutionalization, as he observes that Christians are an unphilosophical race, that demands its [Christianity's] discipline to become 'moralized and comparatively humanized’. Further, Nietzsche asks, that if this is true, "How could God have permitted that?" Answering, [F]or this question the deranged reason of the little community [of early Christianity] found a downright terrifyingly absurd answer: God gave his Son for the forgiveness of sins, as a sacrifice. All at once it was over with the Gospel. Nietzsche responds, "what atrocious paganism.”
Next Nietzsche's most structured problem with Christianity is the ethical system that it promotes. Nietzsche's words show no mercy to Christianity, writing "In Christianity neither morality nor religions come into contact with reality at any point.” Even worse, he ranks liquor with Christianity as "the European narcotics." Nietzsche observes that Christians are "the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal." Following this, Nietzsche's psychology was broken into existential categories, like Aquinas and Kierkegaard before him, which ranked the beast of burden as the lowest form of human being, one who 'follows the crowd' and lives life according to the status quo, that is, a waste this is the Christian to Nietzsche. For example, the Christian has become, as a result of this institutionalized Christianity, "a soldier, a judge, and a patriot who knows nothing against non-resistance to evil"; in other words, the life Christians live, "under the cross," is fake, counterfeit, and gilded; that is, the way of life against which Jesus rebelled. Christian morality, then, is a twisting of "Jesus' teachings into a doctrine of morality."
What Nietzsche finds most unsettling about Christian ethics is its concern for denying the pleasures of life. "A Christian's thinking is perverted," Nietzsche critic William Hubben writes, “even when he humbles him, he does so only to be exalted," citing Luke 18:14 . . . “for everyone that exalts on him shall be abased. He that humbles him shall be exalted." Concluding that Christians' "only great delight is the mean and petty pleasure of condemning others." Further, critic John Evans states that Nietzsche was "disturbed" that "out of ressentiment and revenge, the early Christians sought power to perverse concepts of life denial and 'sin.'" Nietzsche's writings support these claims, writing on sexuality, the highest of pleasures: "Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated into a vice." Again, "[I]t was only Christianity, with its ressentiment against life in its foundations, which made sexuality something impure: it threw the filth on the beginning, on the prerequisite of life." According to Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche interpreted all Christian morality into the statement, "suffering is supposed to lead to a holy existence," and he could not accept this way of living. Furthermore, Nietzsche observed that only "martyrdom and the ascetic's slow destruction of his body were permitted" by Christianity as acceptable forms of suicide. In the end, Nietzsche gives up all hope of finding any good (qualities of the Übermensch) in Christianity, which has "waged war to the death against this higher type of man" and teaches "men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful." To Nietzsche, then, the institution of Christianity was "a radical betrayal of the life view that Jesus had espoused." Jesus, as a man, had "attempted to go 'beyond good and evil," however, his ideas were corrupted following his death.
Nietzsche will perhaps be remembered most of all for his philosophy of God, and more specifically, the Christian God. To Nietzsche, the Christian God like Christianity-is the God of the sick and the weak. Still, Nietzsche distinguishes the God of Christianity as the opposite of the God of Jesus, so far as to say that there cannot be any true God found in Christianity. To the Christian God, man is "God's monkey," whom God in his long eternities created for a pastime. As a result, Nietzsche concludes that "the Christian concept of God . . . is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on this earth." Nietzsche was obsessed, above all, with this area of philosophy, like "no other in history, and his obsession was entered on the death of God."
The "death of God" motif that was popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre in the twentieth century "harks back to Nietzsche, who first coined the expression." The following is Nietzsche's famous story of the "madman": Have you not heard of that madman that lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace, and cried incessantly? : "In seek God! In seek God!" -As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter . . . The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Where is God?" he cried; "In will tell you. We have killed him as you and me. All of us are his murderers, but how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? . . . Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
This, according to Nietzsche, is a message for the future, concluding "In have come too early, my time is not yet." Nietzsche puts this message into the voice of a madman, "whose message falls on deaf ears," as what he has to say is too shocking and comical for the crowd ('herd') to take seriously, but the madman has the last laugh, according to Nietzsche, as the madman is correct in what he has to say. Does this mean that God has literally died? Philosophers and theologians answer this question in many different ways, often dodging the answer. Critic John Mark answers, "it is really something that has happened to man; God has died because we no longer accept him." Existentialist Karl Jaspers wrote that "Nietzsche does not say 'There is no God,' or 'In do not believe in God,' but 'God is dead.' Many academic scholars, believe that Nietzsche was an atheist, who says that the idea of the Christian God, like Zeus and other Gods before, has died, in that humanity must find something more stable to rest and reassess its values upon. Episcopalian Bishop John Spong interprets Nietzsche's declaration that ‘God is dead’ as a sign that the Christian religion needs to declare their traditional theistic God dead or ‘unemployed’. Theologian Thomas Altizer answers that in the false Pauline ‘Christianity’ that Nietzsche has exposed, its centre, Jesus "is a dead and empty Christ who is the embodiment of the determining nothingness"; refusing to allow the living Jesus to arise as the nihilist that he was two millennia ago. Another theologian, Don Cupitt, writes that the death of God means that the characteristics of the God that has relevance to some post-modern society that shares characteristics of a human corpse and the dead's affect on human life. What is more, Zen monk and Buddhist theologian Nhat Hanh answers that the death of God is the essential ‘death of every concept we may have of God in order to experience God as a living reality directly’. While these possible interpretations may have been what the ‘death of God’ meant to Nietzsche, theologian Paul Tillich has gone so far as to call Nietzsche "the most candid of the Christian humanists." Their indirect effectuality seems less than are to what is seemingly unambiguously discontinued, as they are a comprehensive answer to be offered from neither theology nor philosophy.
In do not wish to baptize Nietzsche, least of mention, is that, In conclude that while Nietzsche's personal theological convictions are moot and many have debated what Nietzsche's statement "God is dead" means for Christians in the twentieth century, his opinions on Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian religion remain clear. The salient notion is that Nietzsche's treatment of the theistic Christian God is as an absurdity, the enemy of what the philosopher believes to be 'the good life.
In conclusion, Nietzsche clearly has pronounced separate judgements upon the man Jesus of Nazareth and the religion that is believed to be loosely based on Jesus' life, Christianity. To Nietzsche, Jesus was a great man worthy of respect, perhaps evens a Übermensch; Christianity, however, is corrupt insofar as the fathers of the church institutionalized the teachings of Jesus in an act of hostility toward the Jews. Furthermore, Nietzsche believes that Christianity has become the very establishment against which Jesus rebelled in Judaism: an already corrupt, stagnant, static, hierarchical religion. Finally, it cannot be deciphered whether Nietzsche accepted a god or not. If there is a God to Nietzsche, it would be above morality, would not impose ethics upon humans, would not judge on the basis of its own sacrifice, and would not deny human nature into -denial that is, the opposite of the Christian God. Nietzsche simply foresees him as the one who is replacing Jesus in a manner of successive revelation, predicting correctly that he, like Jesus, is a madman who has "come too early," who has and will continue to be misinterpreted and institutionalized incorrectly.
Once, again, have you not heard of that madman that lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, then running to the marketplace, and cried incessantly? "In seek God! In seek God." As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? Asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? Asked another, or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
"Where is God?" He cried; "In will tell you. We have killed him -you and In. All of us are his murderers, but how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives, who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us-for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners. They, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "In have come too early," he said then; "My time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder requires time; The light of the stars requires time; Deeds, are though done, but it still requires time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most-distant stars and yet they have done it themselves."
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem as antiquatedly set. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepultures of God?" (The Gay Science 1882, 1887).
In his book, The Antichrist, Nietzsche sets out to denounce and illegitimize not only Christianity it as a belief and a practice, but also the ethical-moral value system which modern western civilization has inherited from it. This book can be considered a further development of some of his ideas concerning Christianity that can be found in Beyond Good and Evil and in The Genealogy of Morals, particularly the idea that the present morality is an inversion of true, noble morality. An understanding of the main ideas in the latter works is therefore quite helpful in understanding and fully appreciating the ideas set forth in The Antichrist. One of the most important of these ideas is that Christianity has made people nihilistic and weak by regarding pity and related sentiments as the highest virtues. Here, just as in the Genealogy, Nietzsche traces the origin of these values to the ancient Jews who lived under Roman occupation, but here he puts them in terms of a reversal of their conception of God. He argues that the Jewish God was once one that embodied the noble virtues of a proud, powerful person, but when they became subjugated by the Romans, their God began to embody the "virtues" (more like sentiments) of an oppressed, resentful people, until it became something entirely alien to what it formerly had been.
Further in the book, after Nietzsche devotes a few passages to contrasting Buddhism with Christianity, he paints a picture of the Jesus of history as actually having lived a type of "Buddhistic" existence, and lambastes Paul particularly for turning this historically correct Jesus, for, Jesus, the "Nazarene," into Jesus the "Christ." Also, Nietzsche argues that the Christian moral and metaphysical principles he considers so decadent has infiltrated our philosophy, so much that philosophers unwittingly work to defend these principles even when God is removed from the hypothesis. The purpose of this paper is to expound and assess some of these important reproaches that Nietzsche raises against Christianity, in order to glean from them those elements that can be considered to have lasting significance. It should also be noted that The Antichrist is predominantly aphoristic work, so this paper will not attempt to tie these ideas of Nietzsche's together into a coherent system. To do so, in my opinion, would not do Nietzsche justice. Instead these ideas will be presented and examined as they appear in the work -ne by one and loosely associated.
Nietzsche begins by criticizing Christianity for denouncing and regarding as evil those basic instincts of human beings that are life-preserving and strength-promoting. In their place, Christianity maintains and advocates value which Nietzsche sees as life-negating or nihilistic, of which the most important is pity. Nietzsche writes: Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions that heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.
Pity, according to Nietzsche, is nothing less than the multiplication of suffering, in that it allows us to suffer along with those for whom we feel pity. It depresses us, sapping us of our strength and will to power. It is interesting to note that the German word for pity it, Mitleid, literally means "suffering with" (leid = pain, suffering + mit = with). So to feel pity for someone is simply to suffer along with them, as Nietzsche sees it. It also promotes the preservation of those whom nature has selected for destruction, or in other words, those who Nietzsche calls "failures." This preservation of failures, he argues, makes the overall picture of life look decadent, in that it becomes filled with weak and retrograde individuals. Pity, then, has a twofold effect for Nietzsche, since it both multiplies suffering and leads to the preservation of those who would cause us this suffering as the objects of our pity. Ultimately, pity is nihilism put into practice, according to Nietzsche, since it makes life simply seem more miserable and decadent and therefore more worthy of negation it. Nietzsche does not really develop this conception of pity any farther. As it stands, it seems to be explicitly problematic. Does his conception of pity mean to include compassion and sympathy as well? Can these words be used interchangeably? The German word for compassion is Mitleid as well, so it is possible that Nietzsche is using them interchangeably. The German word for sympathy, however, is Mitgefhl, which means "feeling with." Perhaps Nietzsche is confusing pity with compassion and sympathy. Pity would seem to have a more negative connotation, in that it is a suffering-with that does not achieve anything; a waste of emotional energy toward those who are beyond help, in other words. Sympathy and compassion, as In understand the terms, seem to lean more toward having an understanding (a "feeling-with") of what someone is suffering through and being in a position to help that person. In take Nietzsche to be using (maybe misusing) these terms interchangeably, however, since he uses the word sympathy (Mitgefühl) in other works in very similar contexts.
To Nietzsche, the Christian conception of God is one of the most decadent and contradictory of any type that has ever been conceived, he writes: The Christian conception of God-God as god of the sick, God as a spider, Godas spirit-is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever acquired on earth. It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types. God degenerated into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live! God-the formula for every slander against "this world," for every lie about the "beyond" God-the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness means more than nothingness it and therefore is pronounced metaphysically. Nietzsche is interested in showing how the God of Israel, that is, the God of the Old Testament, was at the time a God of a very proud and powerful Jewish people. This is a sustaining conception of God, than the Christian one, according to Nietzsche, in that it was the Jew's own God-for them only. This God was conceived of as a being to whom some proud people could give thanks for their power and. Assuredness, and it was a manifestation of the Jews' own -proclaimed virtues. The ancient Jews ascribed both the good and the bad to their God, and in that respect it was consistent with nature, both helping and harming. When the Jews found themselves oppressed by Rome during the occupation of Palestine, however, with their freedom, power, and pride stripped from them, their God required a change that was reflective of their predicament. Instead of having a God that embodied the noble virtues of some proud and powerful people, as it once did, the God of the Jews developed into one that embodied the sentiments of an oppressed, resentful, and ineffective group.
It became a God of people who were trying to preserve themselves at any cost, even if that cost were the inversion of their own noble values. They transformed their God into a God of the weak, the poor, and the oppressed, making a virtue out of the necessity of their own condition. Want of revenge on their enemies, by any and the only means possible for them psychologically prompted the Jews to elevate their type of God to the point at which it became a God for everyone. That is to say, that their God became the one, true God, to whom everyone was held accountably. It also became a God that was all good, incapable of doing anything harmful, while the God of their enemies and oppressors became evil-in effect, the Devil. This is a very unhealthy type of God, according to Nietzsche, in that it "degenerates step by step into a mere symbol, a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the God of the poor, the sinners, and the sick better than anyone else, and the attribute ‘Saviour’ or ‘Redeemer’ remains in the end as the one essential attribute of divinity . . . .”
A God such as this can thus have an appeal to any group of people who are in a state of subjugation. Yet unlike the pagan Gods of strong, proud people, this type of God, as Nietzsche points out, remains in the state in which it was conceived (a God of the sick and weak), despite how strong a following it receives. It receives such a strong following because those who are from the ghettos, slums, and hospitals of the world, are the masses (There was no middle class in ancient Palestine; there were only the more elite subjugator and the subjugated masses). The God for ‘everyone’, is overwhelming among those who live in conditions of powerlessness and misery, in that it allows them to deny their present existence in favour of a better one that is to come, in an appeal to "redemption" in a world beyond. Therefore, this God-type becomes a life-denying one, in that it represents a denial of "this" life, as opposed to the healthy yes-saying, life-affirming, consistent-with-nature God of the ancient Jews. This particular type of God is therefore one that is ultimately nihilistic, involving the denial and rejection of the world and everything in it as sinful and decadent. Nature, flesh, and instinct thus become ever more devalued until they reach a point at which nature is seen as a cesspool, the flesh is mortified, and instincts are put in terms of evil "temptations." The concept of God continues to "deteriorate," as Nietzsche terms it, until what ultimately remains are a conception of God as "pure spirit," or in other words, as something to be aware among the integrally immaterial and non-corporeal, just as this is held up as an ideal form of existence. Nietzsche simply thinks of this idea of pure spirit as pure "nothingness," in that it is merely an absurd, contradictory-to-nature postulation. To him, it ultimately represents nihilism and nothing less.
These claims of Nietzsche's are difficult to argue against, because Nietzsche does not really use much in the way of an argument here to arrive at these claims. One is to concur of what has already confronted the reading scribes of his Genealogy of Morals in order to understand better what is going on in these passages. The Genealogy actually does have a sustained argument for claims that are intimately related to the ones above that are found in The Antichrist. This argument deals with how the slave class (Jews), out of hatred and resentment, got their revenge on the noble class (Romans) by shaming them into accepting the slave class' morality. This is one of Nietzsche's most important claims, and it is essential to an understanding of The Antichrist. Nietzsche argues for this claim in the Genealogy by giving an account of the origins of the words ‘good' and ‘bad' and ‘good' and ‘evil'. In their etymological senses, the terms "moral" and "ethical" mean literally "common" and "ordinary." The etymological origin of the word "good," according to Nietzsche, reveals that it once meant "privileged," "aristocratic," "with a soul of high order," etc., and that "bad" originally meant "common," "low," and "plebeian." Even the German word schlecht, which means "badly," is akin to schlicht, which means "plain" or "simple." Furthermore, the word’s schlechthin und schlechtweg literally means "simply" or "downright." This was the language of the aristocratic upper classes in classical times, whom Nietzsche calls the noble, or master class. The word "bad" was used by the master class, without any moral or ethical connotations, simply to refer and to differentiate them from common people, whom Nietzsche refers to as the slave class. The master class calls them "good," due to their apparently superior social standing, or in other words, "good" was simply a term for those things that they were, fierce, proud, brave, and noble. The lower class, or the slave class, on the other hand, developed their own moral language, which is that of the language of "good" and "evil." The anger and hatred that the slave class had for the master class had no outlet, or in other words their anger was impotent, due to their physical and political powerlessness. Nietzsche calls this the anger of ressentiment. The only way the slave class could get their revenge on the master class was to accept nothing less than a complete revaluation of the master class' values. The Jews, who epitomized the "priestly" way of life, according to Nietzsche, were the ones who began what he calls the "slave revolt in morality," which inverted the "aristocratic value equation (good=powerful=beautiful =happy=beloved of God)," to make a good out of their own station in life, and an evil out of the station of their enemies -he objects of their impotent anger and revenge. The slave class accomplished this effect by turning "good" and "bad" into terms which not only made reference to one's political station in life, but also pointed to one's soul and depth as a person.
Thus, the language of "good" and "bad," which was originally used for the purpose of amorally denoting one's station in life, was reevaluated into the language of "good" and "evil," in which what is "good" is common, ordinary, poor, and familiar, and what is "evil" is damnable, unfamiliar, cruel, godless, accursed, and unblessed. In effect, the master class, over the last two thousand years, has been "poisoned" and shamed by the slave class and its language of "good" and "evil" into accepting the inversion of their own noble values, and thus the morality of the slave class, namely that which is "common," "ordinary," and "familiar," is the one that prevails today. From the above argument, understanding how Nietzsche claims that the subjugated Jews transformed their once yes-saying God into the nay-saying God of ressentiment and hatred is easier. This argument seems to ring true in many ways, but it is nevertheless based on the psychological presupposition that human beings are always seeking power and mastery over others, or in other words, that they are always exerting their "will to power," as Nietzsche calls it. In this way, Nietzsche sees the Jews as cunningly having found a way to regain power over their oppressors psychologically by shaming them with the use of the language of good and evil. This assessment goes for what is to follow below as well.
As he demonstrates, Nietzsche is careful not to confuse Buddhism with Christianity in his criticisms. Though he believes that both religions are nihilistic and decadent, he regards Buddhism as a far healthier and more realistic approach. In contrast to the Christian, who is always trying to avoid sin, the Buddhist's main goal is to reduce suffering it. The latter does not fall into the same trap as Christianity does, according to Nietzsche, do not carry any moral presuppositions. It has long abandoned them, seeing them as mere deceptions. The Buddhist is therefore not engaged in the practice of moralizing and making judgments about others. A Buddhist achieves this reduction of suffering by living a passive, non-combatting lifestyle. He does not become angry or resentful, no matter what transgressions someone has assertively enacted against him. Neither does he worry about him nor others. He takes measures that will help him to avoid exciting his senses, while the Christian, on the other hand, does just the opposite through living an ascetic lifestyle and maintaining an emotionally charged relationship with his God through prayer. The Buddhist, in his avoidance of suffering, simply aims to maintain its steady state of peace, calm, and mildness in his lifestyle and temperament. It is a very important point that in pursuing this aim, the Buddhist actually succeeds, whereas the Christian does not succeed in removing sin, and is thus always in a state of wanting "redemption" and "forgiveness," never attaining the "grace" of God that he so desires. The Buddhist is therefore able to achieve a sort of peace and tranquillity on earth.
This idea is vital, in that it relates directly with Nietzsche's conception of the historical Jesus. Nietzsche paints a picture of the Jesus of history for being a true evangel, which means that he did not subscribe to the concepts of guilt, punishment, and reward. He did not engage in faith, but only in actions, and these actions prescribed a way of life that Nietzsche sees as Buddhistic. The evangel does not get angry, does not pass judgment, and does neither he feel any hatred nor resentment for his enemies. He rejected the whole idea of sin and repentance, and believed that this evangelical way of life was divine in it, closing the gap between man and God so much that it is God, according to Nietzsche. Therefore, he saw prayer, faith, and redemption as farcical, instead believing that the "kingdom of heaven" is a state of mind that can be experienced on earth by living this type of peaceful, judgment-suspending existence, free from worry, guilt, and anger. Nietzsche argues that this was the life of Jesus and nothing more, and this way of life was the "glad tidings" which he brought. Nietzsche writes: The "bringer of glad tidings" died as he had lived, as he had taught-not to "redeem men" but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to humanity: his behaviour before the judges, before the catch poles, before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn-his behaviour on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step that might ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. He begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those, who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible-but to resist not even the evil one-to love him.
This conception of Jesus is entirely alien to the one that the church has given us. For the creation and dissemination of this misconception, Nietzsche blames Paul. He also blames Jesus' immediate followers as well. Once Jesus had been executed, according to Nietzsche, his followers could not come to grips with the shock of his sudden loss. Filled with a want of revenge, they wanted to know who killed him and why. They determined that the rulers of the existing Jewish order had killed him because his doctrine went against that order. Not wanting his death to have been in vain, they saw him as a rebel against the Jewish status quo in the same way that they saw themselves as such. In this way, argues Nietzsche, his followers completely misunderstood him. The truly "evangelic" thing to do, he says, would have been to forgive his death instead, or to die in the like manner without judgment or need of vindication. However, Jesus' followers, resentful about his loss, wanted vengeance upon those of the existing Jewish order. The way that they accomplished this vengeance is the same as the way in which the Jews exacted their revenge on their Roman oppressors. They considered Jesus to be the Messiah of whom they were foretold by Jewish scripture, and in this way they elevated him to divine status--as the Son of God (since he referred to him metaphorically as a "child of God"). Faced with the question of how God could allow Jesus' death to occur, they came up with the idea that God had sent down his own Son as a sacrifice for their sins, as a sacrifice of the guiltless for the sins of the guilty, even though Jesus him refused to engage in feeling guilt. They then used the figure of Jesus and their misunderstanding of his doctrine of the "kingdom of God" for making judgments against their enemies in the existing Jewish order, just as the Jews had turned their God into something universal for the purpose of passing judgment on the Romans: On the other hand, the frenzied veneration of these totally unhinged souls no longer endured the evangelic conception of everybody's equal right to be a child of God, as Jesus had taught: it was their revenge to elevate Jesus extravagantly, to sever him from themselves-precisely as the Jews had formerly, out of revenge against their enemies, severed their God from themselves and elevated him. The one God and the one Son of God-both products of resentment.
The figure of Paul, according to Nietzsche, exacerbated this misunderstanding of Jesus' teachings even further. In fact, that is an understatement. In this immortalized figure of crucified Jesus, Paul, with his "priestly" instincts, saw a way to gain power by forming "herds," as Nietzsche puts it. He completely rewrote the history of Jesus' life and Christianity for his own purposes, adding the doctrines of the resurrection, the immaculate conception, and the idea of personal as a reward. Nietzsche attributes Paul's efforts to the hatred and ressentiment of the priestly class, and refers to Paul as the "dysangelist," or in other words, the "bringer of ill tidings." After Paul, the life of Jesus had been turned into something completely alien and antithetical to what it actually was. Again, this theory of Nietzsche's rests on the assumption that humans are in essence motivated by a will to power. Historical evidence concerning the historical Jesus is quite lacking in Nietzsche's account; in that, it relies on a psychological profile of those who participated in this historical scene. However, this psychological analysis seems to present a scenario that is at least conceivable--especially more so than the idea of an immaculate conception and resurrection. In think Nietzsche takes the Buddhistic element of Jesus too far, however. He provides too specifically an account of Jesus' lifestyle and philosophical persuasions without any evidence. It is still quite possible that Jesus could have simply been a more noteworthy rebel against the Romans and the Jewish status quo. More historical evidence would seem to be in order, but Nietzsche's account remains very compelling without it. Its profound significance lies in the fact that in it, Nietzsche has the courage and honesty to show us what, in his and every non-Christian's eyes, is far more likely to have been the case.
Nietzsche is also concerned with how deeply these decadent Christian values have ingrained themselves in our social practices and presuppositions. He especially laments how it has infiltrated the study of philosophy, particularly German philosophy. As Nietzsche argues, he sees modern philosophy as having "theologians' blood in its veins," saying whom we consider our antithesis is necessary: it is the theologians and whatever has theologians' blood in its veins-and that includes our whole philosophy.
Nietzsche argues that Christianity has poisoned philosophy with this nihilistic rejection of the body in favour of pure spirit. He compares the idealist philosopher with the priest, in that the former reduces everything in the world to idea, so that the physical world does not really exist. Figures such as Georg Hegel have done exactly this sort of thing, and Nietzsche is especially critical of German philosophy, both for its idealists’ tendencies and its conception of morality-both of which can be traced to this theologian's instinct. Nietzsche blames Germany's heavy Protestant tradition for the corruption of philosophy, and he criticizes Kant especially for being the latest, "greatest" philosopher to continue this corruption. Kant denies that the physical world can be apprehended directly (the world of noemenon) by the senses, and in this respect he is not a strict idealist, save a phenomenalist. What is meant by this is that all we can perceive are phenomenon, which appear to us as ideas, and the physical (noemenal) world is something that we can never directly observe. Kant's system does not deny that the physical world exists, but it denies that it exists as we know it, and that is enough for Nietzsche to criticize him. One can understand, however, how Nietzsche sees the theologian's blood running through Kant's veins, in that Kant sees the physical world as mere phenomenon -phantom reality. Nietzsche also criticizes Kant for finding a way to maintain a theoretical justification for morality-the Christian morality-while removing God from the picture, namely the Categorical Imperative. Nietzsche rejects this system as one that turns people into automatons. He claims that a virtue must be one of the people's own inventions, not an abstract "duty" in-it, which must be followed universally for its own sake. If the people do not follow its own virtues and do its own duty, he argues, it will perish. What Nietzsche seems to be getting at is that people simply do what they need to do to thrive and preserve themselves, and as explained earlier, different people find themselves having to adapt to different circumstances, such as the Jews did under Roman occupation. Their virtues and duties had to change according to their situation. This is what Kant means when he says that "Kant's categorical imperative endangered life it!"8 Nietzsche then goes on to denounce Kant's deontologicalism it: An action demanded by the instinct of life is proved to be right by the pleasure that accompanies it; yet this nihilist with his Christian dogmatic entrails considered pleasure an objection. What could destroy us more quickly than working, thinking, and feeling without any inner necessity, without any deeply personal choice, without pleasure-as an automaton of "duty?” This is the very recipe for decadence, even for idiocy. Kant became an idiot, and this man was contemporary of Goethe! This catastrophic spider was considered the German philosopher-he still is.
Kant, in this way, also goes against nature with his system of morality, according to Nietzsche. It is simply a Christian God's "Thou shalt" disguised by a secular, theoretical philosophy, or as Nietzsche would see it, it is borne of the theologian's instinct. Any philosophy student can see where Nietzsche gets these ideas from, and in most respects, he seems to be right about this. However, not all of the nihilistic elements of philosophy have their roots in Christianity. Western philosophy has a fundamental inheritance from Plato, who also, as Nietzsche is surely aware, rejects the physical world. He does this not because he thinks of it as sinful, but because he thinks it is ultimately only shadows of reality. Instead, Plato favours the world of the Forms, in which the Forms are paradigms of all objects and concepts that can be found in the physical, sensory world in which we presently live. Plato favours this other world because the physical world is in a constant state of flux, he argues. Since we cannot have knowledge of something that is always changing, as he claims, there can be no real knowledge of anything in the physical world. Knowledge then, for Plato, can only be possible in this other world through contemplation of the Forms, since these Forms are unchanging. Therefore, western post-Socratic philosophy began with a rejection of the physical world, and this rejection also constitutes a large, if not major source of the nihilism in western philosophy about which Nietzsche so often complains.
To refute of which is the claim that Plato and Nietzsche are at opposite poles regarding the treatment of the non-rational elements of the soul, and argue that, instead, they share a complex and psychologically rich view of the role of reason toward the appetites and the emotions. My argument makes use of the Freudian distinction between sublimation, i.e., the re-channelling of certain undesirable appetitive and emotional forces toward more beneficial ends, and repression. In show that both Plato and Nietzsche argue in favour of sublimation and against repression of the non-rational elements of the soul.
Nietzsche’s moral philosophy is often seen as the antitheses of Plato’s for at least the following reason: Plato’s concept of psychic harmony, i.e., the state that it is best for the soul to be in, is said to involve repression of the non-rational elements of the soul (the thumos and the appetitive part) by reason. This repression, in Nietzsche an terms, can be classified as a form of asceticism, and Nietzsche is seen as rejecting all forms of asceticism. In will argue in the following sections that this interpretation relies on a misunderstanding of both Plato and Nietzsche, in that it is neither true that Plato believes repression to be reason’s main way of controlling the non-rational parts of the soul, nor that Nietzsche rejects all forms of rational control over one’s character. In this section, however, In want to highlight these passages in which Plato and Nietzsche say things that could be misinterpreted in the way In have outlined, i.e., what lesser truths would make one believe that the interpretation as a whole is correct.
It would be false to claim that Plato cannot, and has not been interpreted as claiming that reason should repress the appetites. Annas, in her Companion to Plato’s Republic writes the following: [. . . .] Reason as Plato conceives it will decide for the whole soul in a way that does not take the ends of the other parts as given but may involve suppressing or restraining them
The end of the rational part, according to Plato, is to decide on behalf of the whole soul what is good for it, and make sure that it pursues only those ends. In the metaphor of the soul in which the rational part is a little man, the thumos a lion, and the appetitive part a many-headed beast, Plato tells us that "all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete domination over the entire man, and make him take charge of the many-headed beast." We may read this as meaning that the rational part should repress the appetitive part, and curb the thumos so that it only acts as reason would have it act. However, as In will argue, in this mis-reading, all we should in fact read in Plato’s proposal, is that reason should control the appetites and the thumos, but control them by means other than repression.
Nietzsche supposed the rejection of asceticism, and all forms of control over the elements of one’s character, can be deduced from many passages. At this point as we occupy of a particular surface in space and time, whose manifesting inclinations of force fields and atomizations are combining quality standards whose presence is awaiting to the future, however, what seems more important and, perhaps, relevantly significant are the contributions that follow: At which time In abhor all those moralities that say ‘do not do this! Renounce! Overcome your: Those who command man first of all and above all to gain control of him thus afflict him with a particular disease; Namely, a constant irritability in the face of natural stirring and inclinations - as it were, a kind of itching. People like St. Paul have an evil eye for the passions: all they know of the passions is what is dirty, disfiguring, and heartbreaking; hence their idealistic tendencies aim at the annihilation of the passions, and they find perfect purity in the divine.
These passages contrive to give us the following impression of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, i.e., that Nietzsche stands up for the passions, and other natural stirrings and inclinations against moralists who want to annihilate them, overcome, renounce, or control them. If we add this up to the above interpretation of Plato, then concluding that Plato is just the kind of philosopher Nietzsche is naturals’ outcry denounces -and in fact there are many passages in which Nietzsche does denounce Plato, sometimes just for this reason.
That this interpretation of Nietzsche as rejecting control of the non-rational parts of the soul is misleading, in that although it is true that Nietzsche rejects repression as a means of controlling those parts, he does not reject all forms of control, quite the contrary. Together with my argument in that Plato does not believe the appetitive part should be repressed, this will refute the claim that Nietzsche and Plato’s treatment of the non-rational parts of the soul are opposed, or significantly different. A need to introduce certain concepts that are useful in ascertaining the proper meaning of Plato and Nietzsche’s claims regarding the control of the soul by reason.
The preceding section highlighted the sources of the interpretations of Nietzsche and Plato’s positions on the treatment of the irrational parts of the soul as opposite. Plato, it has been said, believes that we should repress these elements or else enlist some of them on the side of reason to repress the others. Nietzsche on the other hand is said to have believed that all parts of our character are of equal value, and hence that we should get rid of nothing, but on the contrary, let all our ‘instincts’ rule us. This is an oversimplified view, but it expresses best the common belief among philosophers that Plato and Nietzsche held radically different views regarding the role of reason and of the non-rational elements of the soul. In believe this view is mistaken: Not just in its exaggerated form, but in any form that contains the claim that Plato and Nietzsche disagreed significantly as to whether and how we should gain rational control over the non-rational elements of our souls.
The concept we need most here is that of sublimation (sublimieren in German - a concept that, incidentally, was introduced by Goethe before its meaning was developed more fully by Freud). It means the redirection of forces impinged upon impulses under which are highly objective, that is, if one were taken anthelmintically, than inexpediently, in that to another spells of one, and to society. In order to understand sublimation, however, we need to spell out two more Freudian concepts, of ‘impulse’ and ‘repression’. An impulse (Trieb: Usually erroneously translated as ‘instinct’) is a force, or pressure the goal of which is (sexual) satisfaction of some kind or other (e.g., oral) which it attains by discharging it on some object. The force is the driving aspect of the impulse, ‘the amount of force or the measure of the demand for work that it represents’.
Freud was interested in two types of impulsive behaviours, repression, and sublimation. Both exist as a means of dealing with problematic impulses, i.e., impulses that we cannot live within society, that we are ashamed of, that would be disapproved of by others, that threatens our relationships with others. Repression presupposes two of the simplest: to repress an impulse is to prevent it from achieving its aim, i.e., satisfaction. The impulse is driven back, shut out, rejected, in no particular direction. As Freud argued, this -denial is far from being the most effective manner of dealing with violent unwanted impulse. In that, if we do not look atop to whatever one is to push them, then one will not know from where they are likely to come back. They will come back, just as the heads on the multi-headed monster of the Republic keep growing back with different shapes, as pathological symptoms.
The second mechanism for dealing with troublesome impulses is sublimation. When an impulse is sublimated, it is not prevented from reaching its satisfaction, but it is made to reach via a different route from that which it would naturally follow, i.e., by settling for its satisfaction on a different object. In Freud’s words: [Sublimation] enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find an outlet and use in other fields, so that a considerable increase in psychological efficiency results from a disposition that is it perilous. Here we have one of the origins of artistic creativity - and, according to the completeness or incompleteness of the sublimation, a characterlogical analysis of a highly gifted individual. Freud saw sublimation as society’s means of achieving impulsive renunciation without appealing to repression. Still, more important, he saw it as the individual’s means of achieving rational control over the dark forces of her unconscious mind. Sublimation is the work of the ego, the rational , and what it achieves is ‘a defusion of the instincts, and a liberation of the aggressive instincts in the superego’. Freud thought sublimation was preferable to repression because it brings about greater rational control.
Much more could be said about Freud’s work on the human soul, and in particular, on his concept of sublimation. However, In shall now leave Freud to return to Plato and Nietzsche, and show how his concepts of sublimation and repression can be used to understand these two philosophers’ moral psychologies not as opposed, but on the contrary, both arguing along similar and very plausible lines.
Let us turn again to the metaphor of the tripartite soul as the joining of a multi-headed beast, a lion, and a little man. In suggested in that reading Plato’s claim that we should aim to achieve was wrong ‘complete dominion’ of reason over the soul as a claim that reason should repress the other parts. Reading the passage in its entirety can vindicate this suggestion in part simply. At 589ab Plato writes, And on the other hand, he who says that justice is the more profitable affirms that all our actions and words should tend to give the man within us complete dominion over the entire man and make him take charge of the many-headed beast -like a farmer who cherishes and adapts in the cultivated plants but checks the growth of the wild - and he will make an ally of the lion’s nature, and caring for all the beasts alike will at first make friends, in and of one another and to him, and so foster their growth.
This passage is ambiguous, but what should stand out, as well as the claim that reason must dominate the soul, is to mention that one should care for one’s appetitive part, and foster its growth. This is surely not consistent with the claim that one should repress it. However, Plato’s meaning is unclear, and in order to make sense of the metaphor of the farmer, we need to look at Plato’s other recommendations as to how reason should manifest its dominion. The clearest, In believe, is to be found in Plato’s portrait of the reasonable man at. Nevertheless, when, In suppose, a man’s condition is healthy and sober, and he goes to sleep after arousing his rational part and entertaining it with fair words and thoughts, and attaining to clear -consciousness, while he has neither starved nor indulged to repletion his appetitive part, so that it may be lulled to sleep and not disturb the better part by its pleasure or pain . . .
The reasonable man -, i.e., the man whose soul is governed by the rational part, in other words, the just man - as he is portrayed in Book Nine of the Republic, does not indulge nor starve his appetitive part. This is why his sleep, unlike the tyrant’s, is undisturbed by violent dreams. If reason is not in control and if the appetites are not lulled to sleep, then the ‘terrible, fierce and lawless broods of desires’ which exists ‘in every one of us, even in some reputed most respectable’ will reveal themselves in our sleep as ‘lawless’ dreams.
This very Freudian analysis tells us the following, appetites, which are not controlled by reason, are likely to come back and disturb us in our sleep as violent dreams. Still, the control that reasons must exert is not repression: we have to make sure that the lawless appetites are neither indulged nor starved, and what is repression but the starving of impulses, i.e., preventing them from ever being satisfied? Repression, or starvation of the appetites, Plato tells us, is as much the cause of tyrannical behaviour patterns as indulging appetites. The ‘lawless pleasures and appetites’ should not be repressed, but ‘controlled by the laws and the better desires in alliance with reason.
That the rational control Plato proposes is not a repressive kind is one thing, but what else is it, and do we have grounds for supposing that it is a kind of sublimation? In following, it would not be far fetched to propose that he does believe we should sublimate the appetites that need to be controlled.
Does Plato use the vocabulary of sublimation when he defines psychic harmony? Surely he does in the case of the thumos. The emotions that are so unruly in children ('for they are from their enactable birth cradles -full of rage and high spirits', are brought to 'marshal themselves on the side of reason, and this through 'the blending of music and gymnastics that will render them concordant, intensifying and fostering the one [reason] with fair words and teachings, and relaxing and sobering and making gently the other by harmony and rhythm' The idea that the appetites should be sublimated is present elsewhere in the Republic "But, again, we surely are aware that when in a man the desires incline strongly to any-one thing, they are weakened for other things. It is as if the stream had been diverted into another channel. So when a man's desires have been taught to flow in the channel of learning and all that sort of thing, they will be concerned, In presume, with the pleasures of the soul in it, and will be indifferent to those of which the body is the instrument if the man is true and not a sham philosopher."
Plato seems to accept the following: the lawless appetites should be controlled and prevented from ruling the soul, but at the same time, they should not be repressed, i.e., extinguished. Their motivational force should be redirected so that it assists the whole soul in its pursuit of the Good. More precisely, it seems that Plato is arguing that bodily impulses can be sublimated through philosophy, i.e., that sexual desires, for instance, will be replaced, to a degree at least, by desires to acquire philosophical knowledge.
We can conclude this section by answering the initial challenge as follows. It is not the case that Psychic harmony involves the repression of a whole genus of desires: Plato makes it clear that the appetites of the reasonable man must neither be starved nor over-indulged. He believes control is necessary, but preferably, a creative type of control, i.e., not one that seeks to extinguish appetitive or emotional drives, but one that sublimates them, transforms them into drives of a similar but more beneficial nature.
Having argued that Plato does not believe that unruly impulses should be repressed, but instead advocate a kind of control that we can properly refer to as sublimation in the Freudian sense of that term, but we must now turn to the claim that Nietzsche rejects all kinds of control of the non-rational elements of the soul as forms of asceticism, and therefore repression. In shall argue that Nietzsche, like Plato, believes that a kind of control like sublimation is both necessary and beneficial
There is no question that Nietzsche rejects repression as unhealthy - as verily does Plato - nor that he claims that philosophers in general, and Plato and Socrates in particular favour a certain kind of asceticism. However, it does not follow that Nietzsche does not believe some control of the desires is necessary. Although sublimation is incompatible with repression - an impulse cannot be redirected in other channels if it is repressed (a criminal cannot be rehabilitated if he is executed) - it can be seen as some kind of control, and is thus quite compatible with the pursuit of psychic harmony as described by Plato. In particular, one passage from Daybreak shows how close the two philosophers really are regarding the treatment of appetites, which threaten psychic health: one already stands before the irrefutable insight that there exists no essential difference between criminals and the insane [ . . . ] One should place before him quite clearly the possibility and the means of becoming cured (the extinction, transformation, sublimations of this [tyrannical] drive)
That Nietzsche mentions extinction along with sublimation or transformation, does not mean that he sees repression as a good general policy any more than Plato does. Here he is talking about the tyrannical drive of the criminal. Had that drive not been allowed to become tyrannical, (and that this kind of prevention need not appeal to repression but may be achieved through sublimation) it would not need to be extinguished.
Nietzsche also believes that sublimation is the explanation for the existence of asceticism. Cruel impulses are sublimated through ressentiment and bad conscience and give birth to ascetic impulses. Desires to murder, arson, rape and torture are replaced by desires for -castigation. Civilization seeks to prevent the gratification of the cruel instincts (for obvious reasons), and by introducing the ideas of responsibility for one's actions and guilt, helps to turn these instincts against themselves, i.e., transform desires to hurt others into desires to hurt one.
There be of three containing comments on the Genealogy as pertaining to Nietzsche’s concerns with the origins of morality and culturally sublimated expressions of drives as well as Federn’s comment that Nietzsche ‘was the first to discover the significance of abreaction, of repression, of flight into illness, of the instincts - and some comments speculating on Nietzsche’s personality a relevant psychodynamic.
Of the Genealogy, ‘guilt, bad conscience and the like, explores, among other things, how at a critical juncture in the development of civilization an morality, drives that had been more freely expressed were constrained and turned inward. This led to the development of the ‘base conscience’ an the ‘entire inner word’ [which] originally thin as if it were stretched between two membranes, expanded and extended it, acquire depth, breadth, and height. In, What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideas’ were to explore of how bad conscience or quilt is appropriated by the ascetic priest, in the service of comforting, and thus ensuring the obedience of the vulnerable ‘herd’. The ascetic priest exercising his own will to power (such as by imposing his interpretations on the minds of others) provides meaning and justification in for what would otherwise be meaningless suffering. He provides comfort of sorts with a realm of existence that is divine , holy, pure, and true. Nonetheless, the will to power may have had certain cosmological and mythic dimensions for Nietzsche, but the concept is also rooted in psychology.
In addition to Nietzsche writing specifically of the sublimation of the secular drive, the will to power and its vicissitude drives, particularly in the form of appropriation and incorporation. As Staten points out, this notion of the primitive will to power is similar to Freud’s idea in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego according to which ‘identification [is] the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person . . . It behaves like a derivation of the first oral phase for a prize is assimilated by eating. It would appear that Nietzsche goes a step further than Freud in one of his notes when he writes: ‘Nourishment - is only derivative, the original phenomenon is, to desire to incorporate everything.’ Nietzsche an will to power never take place without a pleasurable excitation that there is no reason not to call erotic.
Nietzsche condemns those moralities that condemn life,’the morality that would un man’. And we can note that his highest affirmation includes ‘a yes-saying. . . . even to quilt, whereby there is a mutually reinforcing relationship between the growing capacity to say, ‘Yes, thus shall In will it’ it would do above all else, to create beyond it. The will In a creator, and all it was is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident - until the creative will says to it: ‘But thus In shall will it, the creative says to it, ‘But thus In will, thus shall In will it.
In saying ‘yes’ to eternal recurrence as related to Nietzsche’s idea of becoming who one is. It is a saying ‘yes’ to what one is and has stilled: It is to identify one with all of one’s actions, to see hat everting one does (what one become) is what one is. In the ideal case it is also to fit all this into a coherent whole and to want to be everything that one is: It is to give style to one’s character, to be, in becoming, least of mention, one cannot accomplish the Nietzsche an redemption without knowing and choosing who one is: To decide that some past event was a benefit presupposes and commits me to certain views as to who In am, what my dominant desires and goals are now. Still to point out, that affirming eternal decree involves an affirmation of life, of the intrinsic whole of life in opposition to the ascetic ideal, in that ‘Nietzsche’s ideals to love the whole process enough that one is willing to relive eternally been those parts of it that one does not and cannot live. That the ‘reason for wishing most fervently the repetition of each’, is that one.
While Nietzsche is quite willing, as in his psychological explorations, to draw distinction between ‘deeper’ realities in relation to ‘surface’ appearances, he also argue that on a fundamental level one cannot draw a distinction between a merely apparent world and a perspective-free true factual world. The ‘deeper’ realities he discovered cannot be regarded as facts-in-themselves or anything else of the kind that would be free of embeddedness in human schemes, practices, theories, and interpretations. Of perspectival seeing and knowing.
Although Nietzsche calls into question the absolute value of truth, vales the illusion (the truthful illusions) of art that a stimulant to life, values. Masks, veils and even the creative lie, he also answers the call of truth. Truth calls to us tempts us to unveil her. If we have integrity we will say ‘Yes’ to the hardest service, surrounding much that we held dear, inclining our wishes ‘not to see . . . [what]. one does’. When the unveiling takes place we come upon not truth (or woman) in-it but an appearance which is reality by way of a particular perspective. One might regard this situation as, among other possibilities, and opportunity for creative play of the interpretive capacities, for the creating and destroying of play, for a creative sublimation of the will to power. But none of this regarded as truth. What it does involve, in the words of Linda Alcoff, is that for Nietzsche ‘neither a noumenal realm nor a historical synthesis exists to provide an absolute criterion of adjudication for competing truth claims and perhaps what is most important, Nietzsche introduces the notion that truth is a kind of human practice, Alcoff also suggests that ‘perspectives are to be judged not on their relation to the absolute but on the basis of their effects in specific area. For Alcoff, this entails ‘local pragmatic’ truths even though Nietzsche does posit trans-historical truth claims such as his claim regarding the will to power. Nietzsche is concerned with what corresponds to or fits the facts, but such fact are not established without as human contribution, without interpretation. Of course for those for whom the term ‘fact’ should entail before the ‘factum brutum’ there may be an objection to their use of such terms as ‘fact’, ‘reality’, etc., in such a context.
Justifiably for Nietzsche’s bad conscience offers relief n from as deeper, truer guilt or fear of abandonment but from the hopelessness, helplessness, depression, etc., that would exist in the face of the inability to direct one’s instincts, one ‘s will to power, one’s freedom, outward into an upon the world. But also recall the passage in which Nietzsche suggests that ‘this man of the bad conscience . . . apprehend in ‘God’ the ultimate antithesis o of hoi own ineluctable animal instincts, and he reinterprets these instincts themselves as a form of guilt before God (his hostility, rebellion, insurrection against the Lord, the father, the primal ancestor and origin of the world.) For Nietzsche this bad conscience is not rooted or ground in a primal rebellious and hostile deed, rather, it is grounded in splitting off from the ineluctable animal instinct as guilt before or sin against the father upon who is projected the antithesis of such instincts. This can occur when more spontaneous instinctual expression is blocked in the is substituted for the object of instinctual gratification, particularly aggression. As the aggression turned against the as the object upon which to discharge this drive, this bad can be potentially freed and made good by participating in the power of, the being of, God who is the idealized antithesis of such instincts.
(When God acts aggressively, it is with the believer’s good conscience.) And Freud follows Nietzsche when he states that, ‘the believer has a share in he greatest of his god’. He also follows Nietzsche and others who emphasize the spiritual or physiological sickness that accompanies the achievements of civilization with its foundations in repression and guilt. For both thinkers, guilt, however painful, can provide relief from something more painful, whether a greater quilt or depression.
The relevant concept in Nietzsche’s reflections on control of the non-rational elements of the soul has to ‘- overcoming’ or ‘giving style’ to one’s character. This is discussed at length in Gay Science of which this is an extract: One thing is needful: . . . .to ‘give style’ to one’s character, a great and rare art! It is practised - by these who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. The weak characters without power over them hate the constraint of style [and] are always out to form or interpret themselves and their environment as free nature - wild, arbitrary, fantastic, disorderly, astonishing. [. . . .] For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with him, whether it is by means of this or that poetry and art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with him is continually ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of what is ugly makes one bad and gloomy.
One way of interpreting this passage is to understand it to mean that one must come to accept all of one’s defects and not attempt to eliminate or control them. Something like this can be suggested by the following comment by Staten: His stance toward him is the antithesis of, says, St. Augustine’s; Instead of judging, condemning, and paring away at his impulses, Nietzsche says he has simply tried to arrange them so that they might all coexist. ‘Contrary capacities’ dwell in him, he says, and he has tried to ‘mix nothing’, to ‘reconcile nothing’.
However, Staten's analysis is vague. Granted, Nietzsche does not think, so-called weaknesses should be repressed. We discussed his arguments against repression of instincts earlier in this section, and argued that they were not in fact incompatible with Plato’s views on rational control of the soul. Both Nietzsche and Plato, we saw, advocate some form of control of the impulses that does not involve 'paring away' at them, but insofar as possible, involves their redirection toward an object more suited to the well-being of the soul or character as a whole, i.e., some form of sublimation of the instincts. Does what Nietzsche say at contradicting these arguments in any way? What he suggests we actually do with the undesirable instincts is this: Here the ugly that could not be removed is concealed; there it has been reinterpreted and made sublime. Much that is vague and resisted shaping has been saved and exploited for distant views; it is meant to beckon toward the far and immeasurable. Unfortunately thee will not of any attempt to explain what each of the transformations described in this passage actually amounts to - unfortunately, but the passage is vague and metaphorical beyond interpretation. What matters here, is that Nietzsche proposes several ways of dealing with undesirable instincts, and that whatever these ways are, they do not amount to leaving them untouched. Maybe Nietzsche does not pair away at his instincts (although the phrase 'the ugly that could not be removed' may suggest that he in fact does.) Yet he does judge them, i.e., he has to decide whether they must be concealed, or transformed, or saved up. There is no suggestion that any instinct is as good as another and that all will hold a place of honour in the character to which style has been given. To 'style' is to constrain and control, and one cannot give style to one's character and thereby render it tolerable to behold, if one is not able to control one's instincts. As Nietzsche writes later on in that passage, 'the weak characters without power over them hate the constraint of style'. Weakness is equated with lack of - control, and not, as the quotation from Staten may suggest, with control of one's instincts.
Nietzsche does not reject moral theories that demand that we control our desires. What he does reject is repression as an extinction. On the contrary, he seems to believe that an ideal life would involve sublimation - a form of control - of the appetites for the benefit of the pursuit of one's ideal. It follows from these conclusions that there is in fact no significant difference between Nietzsche and Plato's moral psychology regarding the control of the appetites: Neither is in favour of repression, both advocate a certain creative control involving sublimation.
As far as defending opposite theories about how we should control the non-rational elements of the soul, Plato and Nietzsche in fact hold very similar views. Their views can be explained by referring to certain Freudian concepts, sublimation and repression. According to Freud, impulses lend themselves too more than one kind of control. They can either be repressed, i.e., prevented from attaining satisfaction, or sublimated, i.e., their force can be redirected toward a more beneficial object. The first kind of control is rejected by both Plato and Nietzsche (at least as a general policy) as ineffective and unhealthy. Plato sees repression as one of the paths to tyrannical behaviour patterns (those impulses, which are repressed come back at night as violent dreams). Nietzsche views it as one of the worst manifestations of asceticism, one that prevents the ‘one thing needful’, giving style, i.e., the integration of all of one’s character traits, and makes us ‘continually ready for revenge, bad and gloomy’.
The second means of controlling impulses, sublimation, is one that we found to hold an important place in both Plato and Nietzsche’s moral psychologies. Both believe that potentially harmful instincts can be redirected Nietzsche higher goals, and contribute to the perfection of the character. We saw that Plato used the vocabulary of sublimation in the Republic, where he talks of the appetitive impulses being redirected toward a love of learning. Nietzsche had written of sublimation, an he specifically wrote of the sublimation of sexual dives in the Genealogy. Freud’s use the term as here duffers somewhat from his later and more Nietzsche an usage such as in Three Essays o the Theory of Sexuality. But a Kaufmann notes ‘the word is older than Freud or Nietzsche. . . . it was Nietzsche who first gave it the specific connotation it has today.’‘. Kaufmann regards the concept of sublimation as one of the most important concept in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy. Nietzsche, we saw, actually uses the term sublimation when he describes the kind of control one must impose on one’s character in order to give style to it.
When two philosophers who are among the more concerned with the question how we should live turn out to hold very similar moral psychologies, then the concepts they use are probably concepts that should hold an important place in any moral psychology. That these concepts are affirming Freudian non-objections. Freud him was deeply concerned with the problem of how best we could live our lives, and how we could deal with the dark forces of our unconscious. These forces are recognised by Plato (even the most respectable of us, he says are subject to them) also through Nietzsche. Should not a central concern of moral philosophy be how best to deal with them, how best to control them rationally? If so, then it seems that we need a moral psychology that explains what role these dark impulses play in the human soul, and how reason might control them. This, In have argued, is exactly what Plato and Nietzsche attempt to do.
One hundred years ago Thus Speak Zarathustra appeared. The most celebrated work of Nietzsche, it has been read and cited by even moderately educated people. The German philosopher has a stormy reputation due to his tirades against Christianity and his aristocratic rejection of conventional moral views. Nietzsche provokes all kinds of reactions. Each reader may have his own Nietzsche, drawing from him a cherished opinion to be worn as a coloured badge with the hope of shocking ordinary folk. In fact in the last one hundred years, everything and anything has been said about Nietzsche.
This absence of professionalism and this facile subjectivism have produced occasionally disastrous consequences. From the beginning Nietzsche's thought has defied systematic construction. Even now the most memorable characteristics of his pioneering work are his ferocious fulminations, his deconstruction, and the acrid stench left by those who have raided his texts. One cannot hope to say finally what Nietzsche really meant. Still, finding a unifying thread may be possible. This requires ignoring abusively and merely subjectivist interpretations while highlighting those of true value. The renewed interest in Nietzsche's works has produced a vast and expanding body of relevant literature, as much as it is pivotal.
In June 1981 Rudolf Augstein, editor of Der Spiegel, stated without qualification that Hitler was the man of action who put Nietzsche's thought into practice. The journalist took for proof the falsifications of some of Nietzsche's manuscripts by his sister Elisabeth Nietzsche-Forster, who had shaken Hitler's hand in the twilight of her life. This argument is perhaps a bit thin in view of the many other writings that his sister did not doctor.
Augstein is concerned not just about Nietzsche's revival by a young generation of German philosophers but also by the progressive abandonment among German intellectuals of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School for Social Research. For Germans educated in the wake of "de-Nazification," the Frankfurt School's attack on bourgeois values, though often couched in arcane phrases, represented an effort to come to terms with the German past. Nonetheless, Frankfurt's total rejection of all thought that affirms a given fact has led to an impasse. Negativity cannot be an end in it; no one can progress intellectually or artistically through a permanent process of negation.
For Jurgen Habermas, the last important representative of the Frankfurt School, the Real is bad in that it does not include from the start all the Good existing in ideal form. Confronted by the imperfect Real, one feels compelled to maximize the Good, to moralize ad extremum in order to minimize the force of evilly encrusted in a real world marked by incompleteness. Imperfect reality must call forth a redeeming revolution. However, this revolution runs the risk of affirming and shaping another categorical class of settings that are imperfectly real things. Habermas rejects great global revolutions that initiate new eras. Instead he prefers sporadic micro-revolutions that inaugurate ages of permanent corrections, small injections of the Good into the sociopolitical tissue inevitably tainted by the Bad. Nonetheless, the world of political philosophy cannot rest content with this constant tinkering, but this dogged adherence to reform without limitation, as this social engineering without substance. The suspicions of Nazism weighing heavily on Nietzscheism and the impossibility of keeping philosophy at the level of permanent negation make it necessary to reject the obsession with the proto-Nazi Nietzsche and the Frankfurt School's negative attitude toward any given.
Nietzsche has had his share of Nazi interpreters. Philosophers who fellow-travelled with the Nazis often made kind references to his thought. Yet recent scholarship shows that Nietzsche found not only Nazi admirers but also socialist and leftist ones. In Nietzsche in German Politics and Society 1890-1918 (1983), the British Professor R. Hinton Thomas demonstrates the close relationship between Nietzsche and German socialism. Thomas deals with Nietzsche's impact in Imperial Germany on social democratic circles, on anarchists and feminists, and on the youth’s movement. This produced, on balance more resolute enemies of the Third Reich than Nazi cadres. Thomas shows that Nietzsche helped shape a libertarian ideology during the rise of the German social democratic movement. At the urging of August Bebel, the famed German socialist, the infant Social Democratic Party in 1875 adopted the Gotha Program, which sought to achieve redistributionist aims through legal means. In 1878 the government enacted anti-socialist laws, which curbed the party's activities. In 1890, with the Erfurt Program, the party took on a harder revolutionary cast in conformity with Marxist doctrine. Social democracy subsequently oscillated between strict legalism, also known as "revisionism" or "reformism" because it accepted a liberal capitalist society, and a rhetorical commitment to revolution accompanied by demands for far-reaching changes.
According to Thomas, this second tendency remained a minority position but incorporated Nietzsche an elements. A faction of the party, led by Bruno Wille, ridiculed the powerlessness of reformist social democrats. This group, which called it Die Jungen (The Youths), appealed to grass-roots democracy, spoke of the need for more communication within the party, and ended up rejecting its rigid parent. Wille and his friends mocked the conformism of party functionaries, great and small, and the "cage" constituting organized social democracy. The party's stifling constraints subdued the will and thwarted individual self-actualization. Die Jungen exalted "voluntarism," or the exercise of will, which they associated with true socialism. This emphasis on will left little place for the deterministic materialism of Marxism, which the group described as an "enslaving" system.
Kurt Eisner, the leader of the revolutionary socialist Bavarian Republic, devoted his first book in 1919 to the philosophy of Nietzsche. Though he criticized the "megalomania" that he found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, he also praised its aristocratic ideals. The aristocratic values found in Nietzsche, he said, had to be put at the service of the people, not treated as ends in themselves. Gustav Landauer (1870-1919), another founder of the Bavarian "Red Republic," emphasized Nietzsche an voluntarism in his training of political revolutionaries. Landauer's original anarchistic individualism became more communitarian and populist during the course of his political career, approaching the folkish, nationalist thinking of his enemies. Landauer died in the streets of Munich fighting the soldiers of the Freikorp, a group of paramilitary adventurers who were classified as "rightist" but who shared very much of Landauer's outlook.
Contrary to a later persistent misconception, Nietzsche aroused suspicion on the nationalist Right at the end of the nineteenth century. According to Thomas, this was because Nietzsche mocked many things German, (which offended the pan-Germanists), was generally contemptuous of politics, had no enthusiasm for nationalism, and fell out with the composer Richard Wagner, a fervent and anti-Semitic German nationalist.
Nietzsche's vitalist concepts and naturalist vocabulary may account for his early support on the European Left and for his later popularity on the non-Christian Right. Nietzsche's emphases on will and his affirmation of an ethic of creativity have had diverse appeal. In his concise work, Helmut Pfotenhauer assesses Nietzsche's legacy from the point of view of physiology, a term with a naturalistic connotation. This word appears frequently in Nietzsche's work in the phrase Kunst als Physiologie, art as physiology.
The great French writer Balzac, who coined the phrase "physiology of marriage," said about this neologism: "Physiology was formerly the science dealing with the mechanism of the coccyx, the progress of the fetus, or the life of the tapeworm. Today physiology is the art of speaking and writing incorrectly about anything." In the nineteenth century the term physiology was associated with a type of popular literature such as the garrulous serials in daily newspapers. Physiology was intended to classify the main features of daily life. Thus there was a physiology of the stroller or of the English tourist pacing up and down Paris boulevards. In that sense physiology has some limited relationship to the zoological classifications of Buffon or Linnaeas. In his Comedie humaine, Balzac draws a parallel between the animal world and human society. "Political zoology" is used by various nineteenth-century writers, including Gustave Flaubert and Edgar Allen Poe. Nietzsche was aware of the literary and scientific usage of physiology. He noted that the physiological style was invading universities and that the vocabulary of his time was embellished with terms drawn from biology. One wonders why Nietzsche resorted to the term physiology when he believed that it was often used carelessly.
In Pfotenhauer's view, Nietzsche had no intention of giving respectability to the pseudoscientific or pseudo-aesthetic excesses of the "physiologists" of his day. His intention, as interpreted by Pfotenhauer, was to challenge an established form of aesthetics. He constructed the expression "physiology of the art," insofar as the arts were conventionally approached as mere objects of contemplation. From Nietzsche's perspective, artistic productivity is an expression of our nature and ultimately of Nature itself. Through art, Nature becomes more active within us.
By using the term physiology Nietzsche was making a didactic point. He celebrated the exuberance of vital forces, while frowning on any attempt to neutralize the vital processes by giving a value to the average. In other words, Nietzsche rejected those sciences that limited their investigations to the averages, excluding the singular and exceptional. Nietzsche though that Charles Darwin, by limiting himself to broad classes in his biology, favoured the generic without focussing on the exceptional individual. Nietzsche saw physiology as a tool to do for the individual confronting existential questions what Darwin had accomplished as a classifier of entire phyla and species. He attempted to analyse clinically the struggle of superior individuals for self-fulfilment in a world without inherent metaphysical meaning.
"God is dead" is an aphorism identified with Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that, together with God, all important ontological and metaphysical systems had died. Only the innocence of human destiny remained, and he did not want it to be frozen in some "superior unity of being." Recognizing the reign of destiny, he thought, involved certain risks. In the river of changing life, creative geniuses run the risk of drowning, of being only fragmentary and contingent moments. How can anyone gladly say "yes" to life without an assurance that his achievements will be preserved, not simply yielded to the natural rhythms of destiny? Perhaps the query of Silene to King Midas is well-established. "Is this fleeting life worth being lived? Would it not have been better had we not been born?" Would it not be ideal to die as quickly as possible?
These questions pick up the theme of Arthur Schopenhauer, the famous philosopher of pessimism. The hatred of life that flowed from Schopenhauer's pessimism was unsatisfactory to Nietzsche. He believed that in an age of spiritual confusion the first necessity was to affirm life itself. This is the meaning of "the transvaluations of all values" as understood by Pfotenhauer. Nietzsche's teachings about the will were intended to accomplish the task of reconstructing values. The creative exercise of will was both an object of knowledge and an attitude of the knowing subject. The vital processes were to be perceived from the point of view of constant creativity.
Though the abundance of creative energy, man can assume divine characteristics. The one who embraces his own destiny without any resentment or hesitation turns himself into an embodiment of that destiny. Life should express itself in all its mobility and fluctuation, immobilizing or freezing it into a system was an assault on creativity. The destiny that Nietzsche urged his readers to embrace was to be a source of creative growth. The philosopher was a "full-scale artist" who organized the world in the face of chaos and spiritual decline. Nietzsche's use of physiology was an attempt to endow vital processes with an appropriate language. Physiology expressed the intended balance between Nature and mere rationality.
Myth, for Nietzsche, had no ethnological point of reference. It was, says Pfotenhauer, the "science of the concrete" and the expression of the tragedy resulting from the confrontation between man's physical fragility (Hinfalligkeit) and his heroic possibilities. Resorting to myth was not a lapse into folk superstition, as the rationalists believed it to be. It was moderately an attempt to see man's place within Nature.
Pfotenhauer systematically explored the content of Nietzsche's library, finding "vitalist" arguments drawn from popular treatments of science. The themes that rivetted Nietzsche's attention were: Adaptation, the increase of potential within the same living species, references to vital forces, corrective eugenics, and spontaneous generation. Nietzsche's ideas were drawn from the scientific or parascientific speculations of his time and from literary, cultural, and artistic tracts. He criticized the imitative classicism of some French authors and praised the profuse style of the Baroque. In the philosopher's eyes, the creativity of genius and rich personalities had more value than mere elegant conversation. Uncertainty, associated with the ceaseless production of life, meant more to him than the search for certainty, which always implied a static perfection. On the basis of this passion for spiritual adventure he founded a "new hierarchization of values." The man who internalized the search for spiritual adventure anticipated the "superman," about whom so much has been said. Pfotenhauer's Nietzsche is made to represent the position that the creative man allies himself with the power of vital impulse against stagnant ideas, accepting destiny's countless differences and despising limitations. Nietzsche an man does not react with anguish in the face of fated change.
Nietzsche had no desire to inaugurate a worry-free era. Instead, he responded to the symptoms of a declining Christian culture by criticizing society from the standpoint of creative and heroic fatalism. This criticism, which refuses to accept the world as it is, claims to be formative and affirmative: it represents a will to create new forms of existence. Nietzsche substituted an innovative criticism affirming destiny for an older classical view based on fixed concepts. Nietzsche's criticism does not include an irrational return to a historic and unformed existence. Nietzsche, as presented by Pfotenhauer, constructs his own physiology of man's nature as a creative being.
To begin with, there are some obvious general parallels between Nietzsche and Sartre that few commentators would wish to dispute. Both are vehement atheists who resolutely face up to the fact that the cosmos has no inherent meaning or purpose. Unlike several other thinkers, they do not even try to replace the dead God of Christian theology with talk of Absolute Spirit or Being. In one of only two brief references to Nietzsche in Being and Nothingness, Sartre upholds his rejection of "the illusion of worlds-behind-the-scene”; That is, the notion that there is a Platonic true world of noumenal being which stand behind becoming and reduces phenomena to the status of mere illusion or appearance. Both thinkers also insist that it be human beings who create moral values and attempt to give meaning to life. Sartre speaks ironically of the "serious" men who think that values have an absolute objective existence, while Nietzsche regards people who passively accept the values they have been taught as sheep-like members of the herd.
When we attempt a deeper explanation of the ultimate source of values, the relationship between Sartre and Nietzsche becomes more problematic. Nietzsche says that out of a nation (or people’s) tablet of good and evil speaks "the voice of their will to power.” For Sartre, the values that we adopt or posits are part of our fundamental project, which is to achieve justified being and become in-itself-for-itself. It appears, therefore, that both thinkers regard man as an essentially Faustian striver, and that grouping Sartre with Nietzsche as a proponent of would not be unfair "will to power.” Clearly, Sartre would object to such a Nietzsche an characterization of his existential psychoanalysis. In Being and Nothingness he rejects all theories that attempt to explain individual behaviour in terms of general substantive drives, and he is particularly critical of such notions as the libido and the will to power. Sartre insists that these are not psycho-biological entities, but original projects like any other that the individual can negate through his or her freedom. He denies that striving for power is a general characteristic of human beings, denies the existence of any opaque and permanent will-entity within consciousness, and even denies that human beings have any fixed nature or essence.
However, Sartre's criticisms of the will to power are only applicable to popular misunderstandings of Nietzsche's thought. Like the for-itself, Nietzsche's "will" should not be regarded as a substantive entity. Although it is derived from the metaphysical theories of Schopenhauer and is sometimes spoken of in ways that invite ontologizing, Nietzsche's conception of the will is predominantly adjectival and phenomenological. Its status is similar to that of Sartre's for-itself, which should not be considered a metaphysical entity even though it is a remote descendent of the "thinking substance" of Descartes. Thus, in Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche criticizes the unjustified metaphysical assumptions that are bound up with the Cartesian "In think" and the Schopenhauerian "In will" he says that "willing seems to me to be above all something complicated, something that is a unity only as a word.” Although there are passages in the writings of both Sartre and Nietzsche that can be interpreted metaphysically if taken out of context, regarding is better "nothingness" and "will" as alternate adjectival descriptions of our being.
Although Nietzsche's use of the word "power" invites misunderstanding, he clearly uses the term in a broad sense and has a sophisticated conception of power. Nietzsche is not claiming that everyone really wants political power or dominion over other people. Nietzsche describes philosophy as "the most spiritual will to power," and regards the artist as a higher embodiment of the will to power than either the politician or the conqueror. Through his theory Nietzsche can account for a wide variety of human behaviour without being reductionist. Thus, a follower may subordinate himself to a leader or group to feel empowered, and even the perverse or negative behaviour of the ascetic priest or embittered moralist can be accounted for in terms of the will to power.
Nietzsche speaks of "power" in reaction to the 19th century moral theorists who insisted that men strive for utility or pleasure. The connotations of "power" are broader and richer, suggesting that a human being is more than a calculative "economic man" whose desires could be satisfied with the utopian comforts of a Brave New World. Nietzsche's meaning could also be brought out by speaking of a will toward a self-realization, (one of his favourite mottoes was "Become what you are!") or, by thinking of "power" as a psychic energy or potentiality whose possession "empowers" us to aspire, strive, and create.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre presents himself as the discoverer of the full scope of human freedom, contrasting his seemingly open and indeterminate conception of human possibilities with a psychological and philosophical tradition that limits human nature by positing "opaque" drives and goals and insisting on their universality. Such an image of Sartre is widely held, although his insistence that consciousness strives to become in-itself-for-it gives his view of man of the greater determinatives, than a cursory glance at some of his philosophical rhetoric and literary works would suggest. For this reason, Sartre can profitably be related to other theorists who argue that man is motivated by a unitary force or strives for a single goal.
When evaluating such theories, the really essential distinction is between those that are open, inclusive and empirically indeterminate, and those that are narrow and reductionist. This could be illustrated by comparing the narrow utilitarianism of Bentham to Mill's broader development of the theory, or by contrasting Freud and Jung's conception of the libido. While Freud was resolutely reductionist and insisted that "the name of libido be properly reserved for the instinctual forces of sexual life," Jung broadened the term to refer to all manifestations of instinctual psychic energy. Thus, Sartre appears revolutionary when he contrasts him with Freud although he cannot legitimately claim that his view of man is more open or less reductionist than that of Nietzsche. Most likely, Sartre and many of his commentators would take issue with the above conclusion, and from a certain perspective their criticisms are justified. Unlike Nietzsche, Sartre is intent on upholding man's absolute freedom, rejecting the influence of instinct, denying the existence of unconscious psychic forces, and portraying consciousness as a nothingness that has no essence. In comparison even with other non-reductionist views of man, then, it would seem that the radical nature of Sartre's thought is unmatched.
However, in a more fundamental respect Sartre's ontology limits human possibilities by: (1) declaring that consciousness is a lack that is doomed to strive for fulfilment and justification vainly, and by (2) accepting important parts of the Platonic view of becoming as ontologically given rather than merely as aspects of his own original project. It is in this way that Sartre's philosophy becomes shipwrecked on reefs that Nietzsche manages to avoid.
For Sartre, "the for-it is defined ontologically as a lack of being," and "freedom is really synonymous with lack.” 6 Along with Plato he equates desire with a lack of being, but in contrast with Hegel he arrives at the pessimistic conclusion that "human reality therefore is by nature an unhappy consciousness with no possibility of surpassing its unhappy state.” In other words, the human condition is basically Sisyphean, for man is condemned to strive to fill his inner emptiness but is incapable of achieving justified being. This desire to become in-self-for-it, which Sartre also refers to as the project of being God, is said to define man and come "close to being the same as a human `nature' or an `essence'".8 Sartre tries to reconcile this universal project with freedom by claiming that our wish to be in-it-for-itself determines only the meaning of human desire but does not constitute it empirically. However such freedom is tainted, for no matter what we do empirically we can . . . neither avoid futile striving nor achieve an authentic sense of satisfaction, plenitude, joy, or fulfilment.
In Part Four of Being and Nothingness, Sartre describes how consciousness endeavours to create for its lack of being by striving to acquire and acknowledge the world. With the apparent reductionistic vehemence, he explains a variety of human behaviour in terms of the insatiable desire to consume, acquire, dominate, violate, and destroy. Sartre says that knowledge and discovery are appropriative enjoyments, and he characterizes the scientist as a sort of intellectual peeping Tom who wants to strip away the veils of nature and deflower her with his Look. Similarly, He says that the artist wants to produce substantive being that exists through him, and that the skier seeks to possess the field of snow and conquer the slope. Thus art, science, and play are all activities of appropriation, which either wholly or in part seek to possess the absolute being of the in-itself. Destruction is also an appropriative function. Sartre says that "a gift is a primitive form of destruction," describes giving as "a keen, brief enjoyment, almost sexual," and declares that "to give is to enslave.” He even interprets smoking as "the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world.”
Aside from the sweeping and one-sided nature of Sartre's claims, the most striking aspect of this section is the negativity of its account of human beings. Not only are we condemned to dissatisfaction, but some of our noblest endeavours are unmasked as pointless appropriation and destruction. One is reminded not of Nietzsche's will to power, but of Heidegger's scathing criticism of the "will to power" (interpreted popularly) as the underlying metaphysics of our era that embodies all that is most despicable about modernity. For Heidegger, it is such an insatiable will that occurs of an embodied quest to subjugate nature, mechanize the world, and enjoy ever-increasing material progress.
However, while Sartre speaks of consciousness as nothingness or a lack - a sort of black hole in being which can never be filled - Nietzsche associates’ man's being with positivity and plenitude. His preferred metaphor for the human essence be the will -an active image that allows striving and creativity to be reconciled with plenitude. It enables him to see activity and desire as a positive aspect of our nature, rather than a comparatively desperate attempt to fill the hole at the heart of our being. For Nietzsche, all that proceeds from weakness, sickness, inferiority, or lack is considered reactive and resentful, while that which proceeds from health, strength, or plenitude is characterized in positive terms. For instance, at the beginning of Thus Spoke Zarathustra he likens Zarathustra to a full cup wanting to overflow and to the sun that gives its light out of plenitude and superabundance. Later, he contrasts the generosity of the gift-giving virtue with the all-too-poor and hungry selfishness of the sick, which greedily "sizes up those who have much to eat" and always "sneaks around the table of those who give.”
An even sharper contrast can be drawn between Nietzsche and Sartre's attitudes toward Platonism. While both reject the transcendent realm of perfect forms, Sartre fails to realize that a denial of the truth-value of Platonic metaphysics without a corresponding rejection of Platonic aspirations and attitudes can only lead to pessimism and resentment against being. The inadequacy and incompleteness of Sartre's break with Platonism can be brought out by examining it in terms of William James conception of the common nucleus of religion. James says that the religious attitude fundamentally involves (1) "an uneasiness" or, the "sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand," and (2) "its solution.” Sartre vehemently rejects all religious and metaphysical "solutions," but he accepts the notion that there is ‘an essential wrongness’ or, lack in being. Not only does he regard consciousness as a lack, but in Nausea, Sartre condemns the wrongness of nature and other people in terms that are both Platonic and resentful
Just as Plato admired the mathematical orderliness of music and looked down upon nature as a fluctuating and imperfect copy of the forms, the central contrast of Nausea is between the sharp, precise, inflexible order of a jazz song, and the lack of order and purpose of a chestnut tree. Roquentin enjoys virtually his only moments of joy in the novel while listening to the jazz, but experiences his deepest nausea while sitting beneath the tree. He regards its root as a "black, knotty mass, entirely beastly," speaks of the abundance of nature as "dismal, ailing, embarrassed at itself," and asks "what good are so many duplications of trees?".Nothing could be a more striking blasphemy against nature. Trees are one of the most venerable and life-giving of all organic beings, providing us with oxygen and shade. Many ancient peoples regarded trees as sacred, and enlightenment (from the insight of the Buddha to Newton's discovery of gravitation) is often pictured as coming while sitting under a tree. Roquentin too, experiences a sort of negative epiphany while he is beneath the chestnut tree. He concludes that "every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance".18 In contrast to the pointlessness of the tree and other existing organic beings, Sartre says that a perfect circle is not absurd because "it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities.” In such a Platonic spirit, he reflects:
If you existed, you had to exist all the way, as far as mouldiness, bloatedness, obscenities were concerned. In another world, circles, bars of music keep their pure and rigid lines.
In Nausea, Sartre reveals a contempt for human beings that surpasses his contempt for nature and even rivals the misanthropy of Schopenhauer. He particularly despises the organic, biological aspect of our nature. He speaks of living creatures as "flabby masses which move spontaneously," and seems to have a particular aversion for fleshy, overweight people. He mocks at "the fat, pale crowd," describes a bourgeois worthy in the Bouville gallery as "defenceless, bloated, slobbering, vaguely obscene," and recalls a "terrible heat wave that turned men into pools of melting fat.” Sartre also feels that people are somehow diminished while eating. Roquentin is glad when the Self-Taught Man is served his dinner for "his soul leaves his eyes, and he docilely begins to eat.” Hugo thinks that Olga offers him food because "it keeps the other person at a distance," and "when a man is eating, he seems harmless.” Sartre also takes a negative view of sensuality. Roquentin says of young lovers in a café that they make him a little sick, and his account of sex with the patronne includes the fact that "she disgusts me a little" and that his arm went to sleep while playing "distractedly with her sex under the cover.” Perhaps his attitude toward sensuality is most uncharitably manifested when he thinks of a woman that he once show had been dining, remembering her as, a "fat, hot, sensual, absurd, with red ears," and imagines her now somewhere - in the midst of smells? - this soft throat rubbing up luxuriously against smooth stuffs, nestling in lace, and the woman picturing her bosom under her blouse, thinking "My titties, my lovely fruits."
Throughout Nausea the narrator's attitude toward people is uncharitable, judgemental, and resentful. Like the tolerably hostile Other of Being and Nothingness, Roquentin transcends and objectifies other people with his Look. He sits in cafes observing and passing judgement on people, and seems particularly to enjoy dehumanizing others by focussing on their unattractive physical features. He sees one fellow as a moustache beneath "enormous nostrils that could pump air for a whole family and that eat up half his face," while another person is described as "a young man with a face like a dog.” He treats the Self-Taught Man (whom Sartre uses to caricature humanism) coldly and condescendingly and does not even deem him worthy of a proper name. His attitude toward the eminent bourgeois portrayed in the Bouville gallery is an almost classic example of ressentiment. While looking at their portraits, he felt that their "judgement went through (him) like a sword and questioned (his) very right to exist" Like Hugo in Dirty Hands, he senses the emptiness of his own existence and feels inadequate and abnormal before the Look of purposeful and self-confident others who unreflectively feel that they have a right to exist. However, he manages to transcend their looks by concentrating on their bodily weaknesses and all-too-human faults. Thus, he overcomes one dead worthy by focussing on his "thin mouth of a dead snake" and pale, round, flabby checks, and he puts a reactionary politician in his place by recalling that the man was only five feet tall, had a squeaking voice, was accused of putting rubber lifts in his shoes, and had a wife who looked like a horse. Roquentin hates the bourgeois, but for him virtually all the people of Bouville are bourgeois:
Idiots. Thinking that In am going to see they are thick is repugnant to me, self-satisfied faces. They make laws, they write popular novels, they get married, they are fools enough to have children. Although Sartre is more insightful than the unreflective and self-satisfied "normal" people whom he judges so uncharitably, he seems unaware that his own thought fails to escape the ancient reefs of Platonism and metaphysical pessimism. Even the upbeat ending of Nausea is comparatively tentative and half-hearted, and does not question or overturn any of the ontological views expressed earlier in the book.
On the other hand, although Nietzsche shares many of the same philosophical premises as Sartre, his view of life and nature is much less bleak because he thoroughly rejects the Platonic world-view and all metaphysical forms of pessimism. First, throughout his writings Nietzsche vehemently opposes the Platonic prejudice that puts being above becoming, idealizes rationality and purpose, and despises the disorderly flux of nature and the organic and animalistic aspects of the body. He admires Heraclitus rather than Parmenides, denies that there is any "eternal spider or spider web of reason," and declares "over all things stand the heaven Accident, the heaven Innocence, the heaven Chance, the heaven Prankishness.” Unlike Sartre, he had a high regard for the vital, superabundant, and non-rational aspect of nature, and loved music for its ability to express emotional depths and Dionysian ecstasy rather than as an embodiment of reason, order, or precision.
In response to Schopenhauer and several religious traditions, Nietzsche refutes metaphysical pessimism. He denies that life or nature is essentially lacking or evil, or that any negative evaluation of being as a whole could possess truth-value. This is in keeping with his sceptical position, which denies that the thing-in-itself is knowable and insists that all philosophical systems reflect the subjectivity of their author and are "a kind of involuntary and incognizant memoir.” If Nietzsche were to speak in the language of Being and Nothingness, he would insist that the desire to achieve the complete and justified being of the in-itself-for-itself be simply Sartre's original project, not an ontological given that condemns every person to unhappy consciousness.
One of the central themes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the overcoming of pessimism and despair through the will. Zarathustra says that "my will always comes to me as my liberator and joy-bringer. Willing discharges, that which is the true teaching of will and liberty.” At the end of `The Tomb Song,' he turns to his will to overcome despair, referring it as something invulnerable and unburiable that can redeem his youth and shatter tombs. Although the will to power is often associated with striving for the overman (not to mention those who wrongly link it with domination and conquest), it is also essential to such Nietzsche an themes as amor fati, eternal recurrence, and the affirmation of life. In order to affirm his existence, Zarathustra says that he must redeem the past by transforming "the will's ill will against time, as it was" into a creative "But thus In will it; Thus shall In will it" It is out of such reflections that the project of embracing eternal recurrence emerges.
In keeping with his desire to affirm life, Nietzsche's attitude toward other people is more charitable and less negative than that of Roquentin and many of Sartre's other literary heroes. Admittedly, Nietzsche makes many nasty remarks about historical figures, but these are often balanced by corresponding positive observations, and most of his polemical fury is directed against ideas, dogmas, and institutions rather than individuals. For instance, Zarathustra says of priests that "though they are my enemies, pass by them silently with sleeping swords. Among them too there are heroes.” While some of his comments on the rabble are comparable to Sartre's comments on the bourgeois, Zarathustra also criticizes his "ape" who sits outside a great city and vengefully denounces its inhabitants, for "where one can no longer love, there must be, at least of One by which should pass.”
God is dead. The terror with which this event - and he did call it an event - filled Nietzsche is hardly understood any more. Yet to that latecomer in a long line of theologians and believers it meant the disapperance of meaning from the sentiment of life. This, as Nietzsche feared, pointed the way to nihilism. “A nihilist,” he wrote, “is a person who says of the world as it is, that it better were not, and, with regard to the world as it should be, that it does not and cannot exist.” And it does not exist because God is no more. Therefore, there cannot be any belief in a beyond, an ineffable life beyond the grave, not even in the possibility of that “godless” peace of Buddha and Schopenhauer that is indistinguishable from the peace of God and attainable only through the overcoming of all worldly desires and aspirations.
Nihilism, Nietzsche believes, is the fate of all religious traditions if along the road their fundamental assumptions are lost. This, according to him, is so with Judaism because of its all-persuasive “Thou shalt not” that, in the long run, can be accepted and obeyed only within a rigorously disciplined community of the faithful; and it is so with Christianity, not only because it was, to a large extent, heir to the Jewish moralism but, at the same time, tended to judge the whole domain of the natural to be a conspiracy against the divine spirit. For the Christian, the Here and Now with its deceptive promises of happiness - all of which promise, when it comes to it, an inevitable loss, and with its illusions of achievement, all of which conceal for a while the imminence of failure - is nothing but the testing ground for the soul to prove that it deserves the bliss of the Beyond. Nietzsche, like many before him, is philosophically outraged by this doctrine that conceives of Eternity as, at some point, taking over from Time, projecting it into endlessness, and of Time for being an outsider to the Eternity and, after the death of God, forever an exile from it. Everything, therefore, exists only for a while in its individual articulation and then never more. From this void, the black hole, there arises Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence. It is to cure time of its mortal disease, its terminal destructiveness.
Of those modern thinkers who resolutely face the fact that God is dead and the universe contains no inherent meaning or purpose, and Sartre and Nietzsche follow among the most important. However, although they begin from nearly similar premises, Sartre is both less radical and less life-affirming of a thinker than Nietzsche. It is particularly ironic that he puts so much emphasis on freedom, and yet refuses to grant consciousness the power to overcome its insatiable yearning to be in-itself-for-itself, and fails to question his own Platonic prejudices against nature and becoming. Since scientists, during the nineteenth century were engrossed with uncovering the workings of external reality and seemingly knew of themselves that these virtually overflowing burdens of nothing, in that were about the physical substrates of human consciousness, the business of examining the distributive contribution in dynamic functionality and structural foundation of mind became the province of social scientists and humanists. Adolphe Quételet proposed a ‘social physics’ that could serve as the basis for a new discipline called sociology, and his contemporary Auguste Comte concluded that a true scientific understanding of the social reality was quite inevitable. Mind, in the view of these figures, was a separate and distinct mechanism subject to the lawful workings of a mechanical social reality.
More formal European philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, sought to reconcile representations of external reality in mind with the motions of matter-based on the dictates of pure reason. This impulse was also apparent in the utilitarian ethics of Jerry Bentham and John Stuart Mill, in the historical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and in the pragmatism of Charles Smith, William James and John Dewey. These thinkers were painfully aware, however, of the inability of reason to posit a self-consistent basis for bridging the gap between mind and matter, and each remains obliged to conclude that the realm of the mental exists only in.
The fatal flaw of pure reason is, of course, the absence of emotion, and purely explanations of the division between subjective reality and external reality, of which had limited appeal outside the community of intellectuals. The figure most responsible for infusing our understanding of the Cartesian dualism with contextual representation of our understanding with emotional content was the death of God theologian Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900. After declaring that God and ‘divine will’, did not exist, Nietzsche reified the ‘existence’ of consciousness in the domain of subjectivity as the ground for individual ‘will’ and summarily reducing all previous philosophical attempts to articulate the ‘will to truth’. The dilemma, forth in, had seemed to mean, by the validation, . . . as accredited for doing of science, in that the claim that Nietzsche’s earlier versions to the ‘will to truth’, disguises the fact that all alleged truths were arbitrarily created in and are expressed or manifesting the individualism of ‘will’.
In Nietzsche’s view, the separation between mind and matter is more absolute and total than previously been imagined. Based on the assumption that there is no really necessary correspondence between linguistic constructions of reality in human subjectivity and external reality, he deuced that we are all locked in ‘a prison house of language’. The prison as he concluded it, was also a ‘space’ where the philosopher can examine the ‘innermost desires of his nature’ and articulate a new message of individual existence founded on ‘will’.
Those who fail to enact their existence in this space, Nietzsche says, are enticed into sacrificing their individuality on the nonexistent altars of religious beliefs and democratic or socialists’ ideals and become, therefore, members of the anonymous and docile crowd. Nietzsche also invalidated the knowledge claims of science in the examination of human subjectivity. “Science,” he said, “is not exclusive to natural phenomenons and favoured reductionistic examination of phenomena at the expense of mind? It also seeks to reduce the separateness and uniqueness of mind with mechanistic descriptions that disallow and basis for the free exercise of individual will.
Nietzsche’s emotionally charged defence of intellectual freedom and radial empowerment of mind as the maker and transformer of the collective fictions that shape human reality in a soulless mechanistic universe proved terribly influential on twentieth-century thought. Furthermore, Nietzsche sought to reinforce his view of the subjective character of scientific knowledge by appealing to an epistemological crisis over the foundations of logic and arithmetic that arose during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. Through a curious course of events, attempted by Edmund Husserl 1859-1938, a German mathematician and a principal founder of Phenomenology, wherefor to resolve this crisis resulted in a view of the character of consciousness that closely resembled that of Nietzsche.
Husserl and Martin Heidegger, were both influential figures of the French atheistic existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre became foundational to that of the principal architects of philosophical postmodernism, and deconstructionist Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. It obvious attribution of a direct linkage between the nineteenth-century crisis about the epistemological foundations of mathematical physics and the origin of philosophical postmodernism served to perpetuate the Cartesian two-world dilemma in an even more oppressive form. It also allows us better to understand the origins of cultural ambience and the ways in which they could resolve that conflict.
The mechanistic paradigm of the late nineteenth century was the one Einstein came to know when he studied physics. Most physicists believed that it represented an eternal truth, but Einstein was open to fresh ideas. Inspired by Mach’s critical mind, he demolished the Newtonian ideas of space and time and replaced them with new, “relativistic” notions.
In quantum field theory, potential vibrations at each point in the four fields are capable of manifesting themselves in their complemtarity, their expression as individual particles. And the interactions of the fields result from the exchange of quanta that are carriers of the fields. The carriers of the field, known as messenger quanta, are the ‘coloured’ gluons for the strong-binding-force, of which the photon for electromagnetism, the intermediate boson for the weak force, and the graviton or gravitation. If we could re-create the energies present in the fist trillionths of trillionths of a second in the life of the universe, these four fields would, according to quantum field theory, become one fundamental field.
The movement toward a unified theory has evolved progressively from super-symmetry to super-gravity to string theory. In string theory the one-dimensional trajectories of particles, illustrated in the Feynman lectures, seem as if, in at all were possible, are replaced by the two-dimensional orbits of a string. In addition to introducing the extra dimension, represented by a smaller diameter of the string, string theory also features another mall but non-zero constant, with which is analogous to Planck’s quantum of action. Since the value of the constant is quite small, it can be generally ignored but at extremely small dimensions. But since the constant, like Planck’s constant is not zero, this results in departures from ordinary quantum field theory in very small dimensions.
Part of what makes string theory attractive is that it eliminates, or ‘transforms away’, the inherent infinities found in the quantum theory of gravity. And if the predictions of this theory are proven valid in repeatable experiments under controlled conditions, it could allow gravity to be unified with the other three fundamental interactions. But even if string theory leads to this grand unification, it will not alter our understanding of ave-particle duality. While the success of the theory would reinforce our view of the universe as a unified dynamic process, it applies to very small dimensions, and therefore, does not alter our view of wave-particle duality.
While the formalism of quantum physics predicts that correlations between particles over space-like inseparability, of which are possible, it can say nothing about what this strange new relationship between parts (quanta) and the whole (cosmos) cause to result outside this formalism. This does not, however, prevent us from considering the implications in philosophical terms. As the philosopher of science Errol Harris noted in thinking about the special character of wholeness in modern physics, a unity without internal content is a blank or empty set and is not recognizable as a whole. A collection of merely externally related parts does not constitute a whole in that the parts will not be “mutually adaptive and complementary to one-another.”
Wholeness requires a complementary relationship between unity and difference and is governed by a principle of organization determining the interrelationship between parts. This organizing principle must be universal to a genuine whole and implicit in all parts constituting the whole, even the whole is exemplified only in its parts. This principle of order, Harris continued, “is nothing really in and of itself. It is the way he parts are organized, and another constituent additional to those that constitute the totality.”
In a genuine whole, the relationship between the constituent parts must be “internal or immanent” in the parts, as opposed to a more spurious whole in which parts appear to disclose wholeness dur to relationships that are external to the arts. The collection of parts that would allegedly constitute the whole in classical physics is an example of a spurious whole. Parts continue a genuine whole when the universal principle of order is inside the parts and hereby adjusts each to all so that they interlock and become mutually complementary. This not only describes the character of the whole revealed in both relativity theory and quantum mechanics. It is also consistent with the manner in which we have begun to understand the relations between parts and whole in modern biology.
Modern physics also reveals, claimed Harris, complementary relationship between the differences between parts that constitute and the universal ordering principle that are immanent in each part. While the whole cannot be finally disclosed in the analysis of the parts, the study of the differences between parts provides insights into the dynamic structure of the whole present in each part. The part can never, however, be finally isolated from the web of relationships that discloses the interconnections with the whole, and any attempt to do so results in ambiguity.
Much of the ambiguity in attempts to explain the character of wholes in both physics and biology derives from the assumption that order exists between or outside parts. Yet order in complementary relationships between difference and sameness in any physical event is never external to that event, and the cognations are immanent in the event. From this perspective, the addition of non-locality to this picture of the distributive constitution in dynamic function of wholeness is not surprising. The relationships between part, as quantum event apparent in observation or measurement, and the undissectable whole, calculate on in but are not described by the instantaneous correlations between measurements in space-like separate regions, is another extension of the part-whole complementarity in modern physics.
If the universe is a seamlessly interactive system that evolves to higher levels of complex and complicating regularities of which ae lawfully emergent in property of systems, we can assume that the cosmos is a single significant whole that evinces progressive order in complementary relations to its parts. Given that this whole exists in some sense within all parts (quanta), one can then argue that in operates in self-reflective fashion and is the ground from all emergent plexuities. Since human consciousness evinces self-reflective awareness in te human brain (well protected between the cranium walls) and since this brain, like all physical phenomena, can be viewed as an emergent property of the whole, it is unreasonable to conclude, in philosophical terms at least, that the universe is conscious.
Nevertheless, since the actual character of this seamless whole cannot be represented or reduced to its parts, it lies, quite laterally, beyond all human representation or descriptions. If one chooses to believe that the universe be a self-reflective and self-organizing whole, this lends no support whatsoever to conceptual representation of design, meaning, purpose, intent, or plan associated with mytho-religious or cultural heritage. However, if one does not accept this view of the universe, there is noting in the scientific description of nature that can be used to refute this position. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to argue that a profound sense of unity with the whole, which has long been understood as foundation of religious experiences, but can be dismissed, undermined, or invalidated with appeals to scientific knowledge.
While we have consistently tried to distinguish between scientific knowledge and philosophical speculation based on this of what is obtainable, let us be quite clear on one point - there is no empirically valid causal linkage between the former and the latter. Those who wish to dismiss the speculative base on which is obviously free to do as done. However, there is another conclusion to be drawn, in that is firmly grounded in scientific theory and experiment there is no basis in the scientific descriptions of nature for believing in the radical Cartesian division between mind and world sanctioned by classical physics. Clearly, his radical separation between mind and world was a macro-level illusion fostered by limited awareness of the actual character of physical reality nd by mathematical idealizations extended beyond the realms of their applicability.
Nevertheless, the philosophical implications might prove in themselves as a criterial motive in debative consideration to how our proposed new understanding of the relationship between parts and wholes in physical reality might affect the manner in which we deal with some major real-world problems. This will issue to demonstrate why a timely resolution of these problems is critically dependent on a renewed dialogue between members of the cultures of human-social scientists and scientist-engineers. We will also argue that the resolution of these problems could be dependent on a renewed dialogue between science and religion.
As many scholars have demonstrated, the classical paradigm in physics has greatly influenced and conditioned our understanding and management of human systems in economic and political realities. Virtually all models of these realities treat human systems as if they consist of atomized units or parts that interact with one another in terms of laws or forces external to or between the parts. These systems are also viewed as hermetic or closed and, thus, its discreteness, separateness and distinction.
Consider, for example, how the classical paradigm influenced or thinking about economic reality. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the founders of classical economics -figures like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus conceived of the economy as a closed system in which intersections between parts (consumer, produces, distributors, etc.) are controlled by forces external to the parts (supply and demand). The central legitimating principle of free market economics, formulated by Adam Smith, is that lawful or law-like forces external to the individual units function as an invisible hand. This invisible hand, said Smith, frees the units to pursue their best interests, moves the economy forward, and in general legislates the behaviour of parts in the best vantages of the whole. (The resemblance between the invisible hand and Newton’s universal law of gravity and between the relations of parts and wholes in classical economics and classical physics should be transparent.)
After roughly 1830, economists shifted the focus to the properties of the invisible hand in the interactions between parts using mathematical models. Within these models, the behaviour of parts in the economy is assumed to be analogous to the awful interactions between pats in classical mechanics. It is, therefore, not surprising that differential calculus was employed to represent economic change in a virtual world in terms of small or marginal shifts in consumption or production. The assumption was that the mathematical description of marginal shifts in the complex web of exchanges between parts (atomized units and quantities) and whole (closed economy) could reveal the lawful, or law-like, machinations of the closed economic system.
These models later became one of the fundamentals for microeconomics. Microeconomics seek to describe interactions between parts in exact quantifiable measures - such as marginal cost, marginal revenue, marginal utility, and growth of total revenue as indexed against individual units of output. In analogy with classical mechanics, the quantities are viewed as initial conditions that can serve to explain subsequent interactions between parts in the closed system in something like deterministic terms. The combination of classical macro-analysis with micro-analysis resulted in what Thorstein Veblen in 1900 termed neoclassical economics - the model for understanding economic reality that is widely used today.
Beginning in the 1939s, the challenge became to subsume the understanding of the interactions between parts in closed economic systems with more sophisticated mathematical models using devices like linear programming, game theory, and new statistical techniques. In spite of the growing mathematical sophistication, these models are based on the same assumptions from classical physics featured in previous neoclassical economic theory - with one exception. They also appeal to the assumption that systems exist in equilibrium or in perturbations from equilibria, and they seek to describe the state of the closed economic system in these terms.
One could argue that the fact that our economic models are assumptions from classical mechanics is not a problem by appealing to the two-domain distinction between micro-level macro-level processes expatiated upon earlier. Since classical mechanic serves us well in our dealings with macro-level phenomena in situations where the speed of light is so large and the quantum of action is so small as to be safely ignored for practical purposes, economic theories based on assumptions from classical mechanics should serve us well in dealing with the macro-level behaviour of economic systems.
The obvious problem, . . . acceded peripherally, . . . nature is relucent to operate in accordance with these assumptions, in that the biosphere, the interaction between parts be intimately related to the whole, no collection of arts is isolated from the whole, and the ability of the whole to regulate the relative abundance of atmospheric gases suggests that the whole of the biota appear to display emergent properties that are more than the sum of its parts. What the current ecological crisis reveal in the abstract virtual world of neoclassical economic theory. The real economies are all human activities associated with the production, distribution, and exchange of tangible goods and commodities and the consumption and use of natural resources, such as arable land and water. Although expanding economic systems in the real economy are obviously embedded in a web of relationships with the entire biosphere, our measure of healthy economic systems disguises this fact very nicely. Consider, for example, the healthy economic system written in 1996 by Frederick Hu, head of the competitive research team for the World Economic Forum - short of military conquest, economic growth is the only viable means for a country to sustain increases in natural living standards . . . An economy is internationally competitive if it performs strongly in three general areas: Abundant productive ideas from capital, labour, infrastructure and technology, optimal economic policies such as low taxes, little interference, free trade and sound market institutions. Such as the rule of law and protection of property rights.
The prescription for medium-term growth of economies in countries like Russia, Brazil, and China may seem utterly pragmatic and quite sound. But the virtual economy described is a closed and hermetically sealed system in which the invisible hand of economic forces allegedly results in a health growth economy if impediments to its operation are removed or minimized. It is, of course, often trued that such prescriptions can have the desired results in terms of increases in living standards, and Russia, Brazil and China are seeking to implement them in various ways.
In the real economy, however, these systems are clearly not closed or hermetically sealed: Russia uses carbon-based fuels in production facilities that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming: Brazil is in the process of destroying a rain forest that is critical to species diversity and the maintenance of a relative abundance of atmospheric gases that regulate Earth temperature, and China is seeking to build a first-world economy based on highly polluting old-world industrial plants that burn soft coal. Not to forget, . . . the virtual economic systems that the world now seems to regard as the best example of the benefits that can be derived form the workings of the invisible hand, that of the United States, operates in the real economy as one of the primary contributors to the ecological crisis.
In “Consilience,” Edward O. Wilson makes to comment, the case that effective and timely solutions to the problem threatening human survival is critically dependent on something like a global revolution in ethical thought and behaviour. But his view of the basis for this revolution is quite different from our own. Wilson claimed that since the foundations for moral reasoning evolved in what he termed ‘gene-culture’ evolution, the rules of ethical behaviour re emergent aspects of our genetic inheritance. Based on the assumptions that the behaviour of contemporary hunter-gatherers resembles that of our hunter-gatherers forebears in the Palaeolithic Era, he drew on accounts of Bushman hunter-gatherers living in the centre Kalahari in an effort to demonstrate that ethical behaviour is associated with instincts like bonding, cooperation, and altruism.
Wilson argued that these instincts evolved in our hunter-gatherer accessorial descendabilities, whereby genetic mutation and the ethical behaviour associated with these genetically based instincts provided a survival advantage. He then claimed that since these genes were passed on to subsequent generations of our descendable characteristics, which eventually became pervasive in the human genome, the ethical dimension of human nature has a genetic foundation. When we fully understand the “innate epigenetic rules of moral reasoning,” it seems probable that the rules will probably turn out to be an ensemble of many algorithms whose interlocking activities guide the mind across a landscape of nuances moods and choices.
Any reasonable attempt to lay a firm foundation beneath the quagmire of human ethics in all of its myriad and often contradictory formulations is admirable, and Wilson’s attempt is more admirable than most. In our view, however, there is little or no prospect that it will prove successful for a number of reasons. Wile te probability for us to discover some linkage between genes and behaviour, seems that the lightened path of human ethical behaviour and ranging advantages of this behaviour is far too complex, not o mention, inconsistently been reduced to a given set classification of “epigenetic ruled of moral reasoning.”
Also, moral codes and recoding may derive in part from instincts that confer a survival advantage, but when we are the examine to these codes, it also seems clear that they are primarily cultural products. This explains why ethical systems are constructed in a bewildering variety of ways in different cultural contexts and why they often sanction or legitimate quite different thoughts and behaviours. Let us not forget that rules f ethical behaviours are quite malleable and have been used sacredly to legitimate human activities such as slavery, colonial conquest, genocide and terrorism. As Cardinal Newman cryptically put it, “Oh how we hate one another for the love of God.”
According to Wilson, the “human mind evolved to believe in the gods” and people “need a sacred narrative” to his view are merely human constructs and, therefore, there is no basis for dialogue between the world views of science and religion. “Science for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of the moral and religiously sentient. The result of the competition between the two world views, is believed, as In, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself.
Wilson obviously has a right to his opinions, and many will agree with him for their own good reasons, but what is most interesting about his thoughtful attempted is to posit a more universal basis for human ethics in that it s based on classical assumptions about the character of both physical and biological realities. While Wilson does not argue that human’s behaviour is genetically determined in the strict sense, however, he does allege that there is a causal linkage between genes and behaviour that largely condition this behaviour, he appears to be a firm believer in classical assumption that reductionism can uncover the lawful essences that principally govern the physical aspects that were attributed to reality, including those associated with the alleged “epigenetic rules of moral reasoning.”
Once, again, Wilson’s view is apparently nothing that cannot be reduced to scientific understandings or fully disclosed in scientific terms, and this apparency of hope for the future of humanity is that the triumph of scientific thought and method will allow us to achieve the Enlightenments ideal of disclosing the lawful regularities that govern or regulate all aspects of human experience. Hence, science will uncover the “bedrock of moral and religious sentiment, and the entire human epic will be mapped in the secular space of scientific formalism.” The intent is not to denigrate Wilson’s attentive efforts to posit a more universal basis for the human condition, but is to demonstrate that any attempt to understand or improve upon the behaviour based on appeals to outmoded classical assumptions is unrealistic and outmoded. If the human mind did, in fact, evolve in something like deterministic fashion in gene-culture evolution - and if there were, in fact, innate mechanisms in mind that are both lawful and benevolent. Wilson’s program for uncovering these mechanisms could have merit. But for all the reasons that have been posited, classical determinism cannot explain the human condition and its evolutionary principle that govern in their functional dynamics, as Darwinian evolution should be modified to acclimatize the complementary relationships between cultural and biological principles that governing evaluations do indeed have in them a strong, and firm grip upon genetical mutations that have attributively been the distribution in the contribution of human interactions with themselves in the finding to self-realizations and undivided wholeness.
Freud’s use of the word “superman” or “overman”in and of itself might indicate only a superficial familiarity with a popular term associated with Nietzsche. However, as Holmes has pointed out, Freud is discussing the holy, or saintly , and its relation to repression and the giving up of freedom of instinctual expression, central concerns of the third essay of on the Genealogy of Morals, ‘What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals.’
Nietzsche writes of the anti-nature of the ascetic ideal, how it relates to a disgust with oneself, its continuing destructive effect upon the health of Europeans, and how it relates to the realm of ‘subterranean revenge’ and ressentiment. In addition, Nietzsche writes of the repression of instincts (though not specifically on impulses toward sexual perversions) and of their being turned inward against the self. Continuing, he wrote on the ‘instinct for freedom forcibly made latent . . . this instinct for freedom pushed back and repressed. In closing, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material: Zarathustra also speaks of most sacred, now he must find allusion caprice, even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey. The formulation as it pertains to sexual perversions and incest certainly does not derive from Nietzsche (although, along different lines incest was an important factor in Nietzsche’s understanding of Oedipus), the relating freedom was very possibly influenced by Nietzsche, particularly in light of Freud’s reference as the ‘holy’; as well as to the ‘overman’. As these of issues re explored in the Antichrist which had been published just two years earlier.
Nietzsche had written of sublimation, and he specifically wrote of sublimation of sexual drives in the Genealogy. Freud’s use of the term as differing somewhat from his later and more Nietzsche an usage such as in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, but as Kaufmann notes, while ‘the word is older than either Freud or Nietzsche . . . it was Nietzsche who first gave it the specific connotation it has today’. Kaufmann regards the concept of sublimation as the most important concepts in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy.
Of course it is difficult to determine whether or not Freud may have been recently reading Nietzsche or was consciously or unconsciously drawing on information he had come across some years earlier. It is also possible that Freud had recently of some time earlier, registered a limited resource of the Genealogy or other works. At a later time in his life Freud claimed he could not read more than a few passage s of Nietzsche due to being overwhelmed by the wealth of ideas. This claim might be supported by the fact that Freud demonstrates only a limited understanding of certain of Nietzsche’s concepts. For example, his reference to the ‘overman’, such in showing a lack of understanding of the self-overcoming and sublimation, not simply freely gratified primitive instincts. Later in life, Freud demonstrates a similar misunderstanding in his equation the overman with the tyrannical father of the primal horde. Perhaps Freud confused the overman with he ‘master’ whose morality is contrasted with that of ‘slave ‘ morality in the Genealogy and Beyond Good and Evil. The conquering master more freely gratifies instinct and affirms himself, his world and has values as good. The conquered slave, unable to express himself freely, creates negating, resentful, vengeful morality glorifying his own crippled. Alienated condition, and her crates a division not between goof (noble) and bad (Contemptible), but between good (undangerous) and evil (wicked and powerful - dangerous ness).
Much of what Rycroft writes is similar to, implicit in, or at least compatible with what we have seen of Nietzsche’s theoretical addresses as to say, as other materia that has been placed on the table fr consideration. Rycroft specifically states that h takes up ‘a position much nearer Groddeck’s [on the nature of the, “it” or, id] than Freud’s. He doesn’t mention that Freud was ware of Groddeck’s concept of the “it” and understood the term to be derived from Nietzsche. However, beyond ‘the process itself; as a consequence of grammatical habit - that the activity, ‘thinking’, requires an agent.
The self, as in its manifesting in constructing dreams, ma y be an aspect of our psychic live tat knows things that our waking “In” or ego may not know and may not wish to know, and a relationship ma y be developed between these aspects of our psychic lives in which the latter opens itself creatively to the communications of he former. Zarathustra states: ‘Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, an unknown sage - whose name is self. In your body he dwells, he is your body’. Nonetheless, Nietzsche’s self cannot be understood as a replacement for an all-knowing God to whom the “I-ness” or ego appeals for its wisdom, commandments, guidance and the like. To open oneself to another aspect of oneself that is wiser (an unknown sage) in the sense that new information can be derived from it, does not necessarily entail that this ‘wiser’ component of one’s psychic life has God-like knowledge and commandments which if one (one’s “I-nesses”) deciphers and opens correctly to will set one on the straight path. It is true though that when Nietzsche writes of the self as ‘a mighty ruler an unknown sage ‘ he does open himself to such an interpretation and even to the possibility that this ‘ruler’ is unreachable, unapproachable for the “I.” (Nietzsche/Zarathustra redeeming the body) and after “On the Despisers of he Body, makes it clear, that there are aspects of our psychic selves that interpret the body, that mediate its directives, ideally in ways that do not deny the body but aid in the body doing ‘what it would do above all else, to create beyond itself’.
Also the idea of a fully formed, even if the unconscious, ‘mighty ruler’ and ‘unknown sage ‘ as a true self beneath an only apparent surface is at odds with Nietzsche ‘s idea that there is no one true, stable, enduring self in and of itself, to be found once of the veil in appearance is removed. And even early in his career Nietzsche wrote sarcastically of ‘that cleverly discovered well of inspiration, the unconscious’. There is, though, a tension in Nietzsche between the notion of bodily-based drive is pressing for discharge (which can, among other things, (sublimated) and a more organized bodily-based self which may be ‘an unknown sage’ and in relation to which the “I-ness” may open to potential communications in the manner for which there is no such conception of self for which Freud and the dream is not produced with the intention of being understood.
Nietzsche explored the ideas of psychic energy and drives pressing for discharge. His discussion on sublimation typically implies an understanding of drives in just such a sense as does his idea that dreams provide for discharge of drives. Nonetheless, he did not relegate all that is derived from instinct and the body to this realm. While for Nietzsche there is no stable, enduring true self awaiting discovery and liberation, the body and the self (in the broadest sense of the term, including what is unconscious and may be at work in dreams as Rycroft describes it) may offer up potential communication and direct to the “I” or ego. However, at times Nietzsche describes the “I” or ego as having very little, if any, idea as to how it is being by the “it.”
Nietzsche, like Freud, describe of two types of mental possesses, on which ‘binds’ [man’s] life to reason its concepts, such of an order as not to be swept away by the current and to lose himself, the other, pertaining to the worlds of myth, art and the dream, ‘constantly showing the desire to shape the existing world of the wide-wake person to be variegatedly irregular and disinterested, incoherent, exciting and eternally new, as is the world of dreams’. Art may function as a ’middle sphere’ and ‘middle faculty’ (transitional sphere and faculty) between a more primitive ‘metaphor-world’ of impressions and the forms of uniform abstract concepts.
Again, Nietzsche, like Freud attempts to account for the function of consciousness in light of the new under stranding of conscious mental functioning. Nietzsche distinguishes between himself and ‘older philosophers’ who do not appreciate the significance of unconscious mental functioning, while Freud distinguishes the unconscious of philosophers and the unconscious of psychoanalysis. What is missing is the acknowledgement of Nietzsche as philosopher and psychologist whose idea as on unconscious mental functioning have very strong affinities with psychoanalysis, as Freud himself will mention on a number of other occasions. Neither here nor in his letters to Fliess which he mentions Lipps, nor in his later paper in which Lipp (the ‘German philosopher’) is acknowledged again, is Nietzsche mentioned when it comes to acknowledging in a specific and detailed manner as important forerunner of psychoanalysis. Although Freud will state on a number of occasions that Nietzsche’s insight are close to psychoanalysis, very rarely will he state any details regarding the similarities. He mentions a friend calling his attention to the notion of the criminal from a sense of guilt, a patient calling his attention to the pride-memory aphorism, Nietzsche’s idea in dreams we cannot enter the realm of the psyche of primitive man, etc. there is never any derailed statement on just what Nietzsche anticipated pertinently to psychoanalysis. This is so even after Freud has been taking Nietzsche with him on vacation.
Equally important, the classical assumption that the only privileged or valid knowledge is scientific is one of the primary sources of the stark division between the two cultures of humanistic and scientists-engineers, in this view, Wilson is quite correct in assuming that a timely end to the two culture war and a renewer dialogue between members of those cultures is now critically important to human survival. It is also clear, however, those dreams of reason based on the classical paradigm will only serve to perpetuate the two-culture war. Since these dreams are also remnants of an old scientific world-view that no longer applies in theory in fact, to the actual character of physical reality, as reality is a probable service to frustrate the solution for which in found of a real world problem.
However, there is a renewed basis for dialogue between the two cultures, it is believed as quite different from that described by Wilson. Since classical epistemology has been displaced, or is the process of being displaced, by the new epistemology of science, the truths of science can no longer be viewed as transcendent ad absolute in the classical sense. The universe more closely resembles a giant organism than a giant machine, and it also displays emergent properties that serve to perpetuate the existence of the whole in both physics and biology that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted determinism, simple causality, first causes, linear movements and initial conditions. Perhaps the first and most important precondition for renewed dialogue between the two cultural conflicting realizations as Einstein explicated upon its topic as, that a human being is a “part of the whole.’ It is this spared awareness that allows for the freedom, or existential choice of self-decision of determining our free-will and the power to differentiate direct parts to free ourselves of the “optical allusion”of our present conception of self as a ‘partially limited in space and time’ and to widen ‘our circle of compassion to embrace al living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty’. Yet, one cannot, of course, merely reason oneself into an acceptance of this view, nonetheless, the inherent perceptions of the world are reason that the capacity for what Einstein termed ‘cosmic religious feelings’. Perhaps, our enabling capability for that which is within us to have the obtainable ability to enabling of our experience of self-realization, that of its realness is to sense its proven existence of a sense of elementarily leaving to some sorted conquering sense of universal consciousness, in so given to arise the existence of the universe, which really makes an essential difference to the existence or its penetrative spark of awakening indebtednesses of reciprocality?
Those who have this capacity will hopefully be able to communicate their enhanced scientific understanding of the relations among all aspects, and in part that is our self and the whole that are the universe in ordinary language wit enormous emotional appeal. The task lies before the poets of this renewing reality have nicely been described by Jonas Salk, which “man has come to the threshold of a state of consciousness, regarding his nature and his relationship to the Cosmos, in terms that reflects ‘reality’. By using the processes of Nature and metaphor, to describe the forces by which it operates upon and within Man, we come as close to describing reality as we can within the limits of our comprehension. Men will be very uneven in their capacity or such understanding, which, naturally, differs for different ages and cultures, and develops and changes over the course of time. For these reasons it will always be necessary to use metaphorical and mythical provisions as comprehensive guides to living. In this way. Man’s afforded efforts by the imagination and intellect can be playing the vital roles embarking upon the survival and his endurable evolution.
It is time, if not, only, to be concluded from evidence in its suggestive conditional relation, for which the religious imagination and the religious experience to engage upon the complementarity of truths science, as fitting that silence with meaning, as having to antiquate a continual emphasis, least of mention, that does not mean that those who do not believe in the existence of God or Being, should refrain in any sense from assessing the impletions of the new truths of science. Understanding these implications does not necessitate any ontology, and is in no way diminished by the lack of any ontology. And one is free to recognize a basis for a dialogue between science and religion for the same reason that one is free to deny that this basis exists - there is nothing in our current scientific world view that can prove the existence of God or Being and nothing that legitimate any anthropomorphic conceptions of the nature of God or Being.
The present time is clearly a time of a major paradigm shift, but consider the last great paradigm shift, the one that resulted in the Newtonian framework. This previous paradigm shift was profoundly problematic for the human spirit, it led to the conviction that we are strangers, freaks of nature, conscious beings in a universe that is almost entirely unconscious, and that, since the universe its strictly deterministic, even the free will we feel in regard to the movements of our bodies is an allusion. Yet it was probably necessary for the Western mind to go through the acceptance of such a paradigm.
In the final analysis there will be philosophers unprepared to accept that, if a given cognitive capacity is psychologically real, then there must be an explanation of how it is possible for an individual in the course of human development to acquire that cognitive capacity, or anything like it, can have a role to play in philosophical accounts of concepts and conceptual abilities. The most obvious basis for such a view would be a Frégean distrust of “psychology” that leads to a rigid division of labour between philosophy and psychology. The operative thought is that the task of a philosophical theory of concepts is to explain what a given concept is or what a given conceptual ability consist in. This, it is frequently maintained, is something that can be done in complete independence of explaining how such a concept or ability might be acquired. The underlying distinction is one between philosophical questions centring around concept possession and psychological questions centring around concept possibilities for an individual to acquire that ability, then it cannot be psychologically real. Nevertheless, this distinction is, however, strictly one does adhere to the distinction, it provides no support for a rejection of any given cognitive capacity for which is psychologically real. The neo-Frégean distinction is directly against the view that facts about how concepts are acquired have a role to play in explaining and individualizing concepts. But this view does not have to be disputed by a supporter as such, nonetheless, all that the supporter is to commit is that the principle that no satisfactory account of what a concept is should make it impossible to provide explanation of how that concept can be acquired. That is, that this principle has nothing to say about the further question of whether the psychological explanation has a role to play in a constitutive explanation of the concept, and hence is not in conflict with the neo-Frégean distinction.
A full account of the structure of consciousness, will need to illustrate those higher, conceptual forms of consciousness to which little attention on such an account will take and about how it might emerge from given points of value, is the thought that an explanation of everything that is distinctive about consciousness will emerge out of an account of what it is for a subject to be capable of thinking about himself. But, to a proper understanding of the complex phenomenon of consciousness. There are no facts about linguistic mastery that will determine or explain what might be termed the cognitive dynamics that are individual processes that have found their way forward for a theory of consciousness, it sees, to chart the characteristic features individualizing the various distinct conceptual forms of consciousness in a way that will provide a taxonomy of unconsciousness and they, to show how these manifest the Characterlogical functions can enhance the condition of manifesting services, whereby, its continuous condition may that it be the determinate levels of content. What is hoped is now clear is that these forms of higher forms of consciousness emerge from a rich foundation of non-conceptual representations of thought, which can only expose and clarify their conviction that these forms of conscious thought hold the key, not just to an eventful account of how mastery of the conscious paradigms, but to a proper understanding of the plexuity of self-consciousness might that it be and/or the overall conjecture of consciousness that stands alone as to an everlasting vanquishment into the abyssal of ever-unchangeless states of unconsciousness, as their underlying potential latencies.
Until most recently it might have been that most approaches to the philosophy of science were ‘cognitive’. This includes ‘logical positivism’, as nearly all of those who wrote about the nature of science would have agreed that science ought to be ‘value-free’. This had been an exceptional emphasis by the first positivist, as it would be upon twentieth-century successors. As science, deals with ‘facts’, and facts and values and irreducibly distinct, as facts are objective, they are what we seek in our knowledge of the world. Values are subjective: They bear the mark of human interest, they are the radically individual products of feeling and desire. Fact and value cannot, therefore, be inferred from fact, fact ought not be influenced by value. There were philosophers, notably some in the Kantian tradition, who viewed the relation of the human individual to the universalist aspiration of difference differently. However, the legacy of three centuries of largely empiricist reflection of the ‘new’ sciences ushered in by Galilee Galileo (1564-1642), the Italian scientist whose distinction belongs to the history of physics and astronomy, rather than natural philosophy.
The philosophical importance of Galileo’s science rests largely upon the following closely related achievements: (1) His stunning successful arguments against Aristotelean science, (2) his proofs that mathematics is applicable to the real world. (3) His conceptually powerful use of experiments, both actual and employed regulatively, (4) His treatment of causality, replacing appeal to hypothesized natural ends with a quest for efficient causes, and (5) his unwavering confidence in the new style of theorizing that would become known as ‘mechanical explanation’.
A century later, the maxim that scientific knowledge is ‘value-laded’ seems almost as entrenched as its opposite was earlier. It is supposed that between fact and value has been breached, and philosophers of science seem quite at home with the thought that science and value may be closely intertwined after all. What has happened to cause such an apparently radical change? What is its implications for the objectivity of science, the prized characteristic that, from Plato’s time onwards, has been assumed to set off real knowledge (epistēmē) from mere opinion (doxa)? To answer these questions adequately, one would first have to know something of the reasons behind the decline of logical positivism, as, well as of the diversity of the philosophies of science that have succeeded it.
More general, the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science is burgeoning on several fronts. Contemporary philosophical re-election about the mind-which has been quite intensive-has been influenced by this empirical inquiry, to the extent that the boundary lines between them are blurred in places.
Nonetheless, the philosophy of mind at its core remains a branch of metaphysics, traditionally conceived. Philosophers continue to debate foundational issues in terms not radically unlike in kind or character from those in vogue in previous eras. Many issues in the metaphysics of science hinge on the notion of ‘causation’. This notion is as important in science as it is in everyday thinking, and much scientific theorizing is concerned specifically to distinguishing features that characteristics the ‘causes’ of various phenomena. However, there is little philosophical agreement on what it is to say that one event is the cause of another.
Modern discussion of causation starts with the Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist David Hume (1711-76), who argued that causation is simply a matter for which he denies that we have innate ideas. In that the causal relation is observably anything other than ‘constant conjunction’ because, they are observably necessary connections anywhere, and that there is either an empirical or demonstrative proof for the assumptions: That the future will resemble the past, and that every event has a cause. That is to say, that there is an irresolvable dispute between advocates of free-will and determinism, that extreme scepticism is coherent and that we can find the experiential source of our ideas of self-substance or God.
According to Hume (1978), on event causes another if only if events of the type to which the first event belongs regularly occur in conjunctive events of the type to which the second event belongs. The formulation, however, leaves several questions open. First, there is a problem of distinguishing genuine ‘causal law’ from ‘accidental regularities’. Not all regularities are sufficiently law-like to underpin causal relationships. Being that there is a screw in my desk could well be constantly conjoined with being made of copper, without its being true that these screws are made of copper because they are in my desk. Secondly, the idea of constant conjunction does not give a ‘direction’ to causation. Causes need to be distinguished from effects. Nevertheless, knowing that A-type events are constantly conjoined with B-type events does not tell us that of ‘A’ and ‘B’ is the cause that the effect, since constant conjunction is itself a symmetric relation. Thirdly, there is a problem about ‘probabilistic causation’. When we say that causes and effects are constantly conjoined, do we mean that the effects are always found with the causes, or is it enough that the causes make the effect probable?
Many philosophers of science during the past century have in mind to take in, the preferable dialectic awarenesses in rhetorical discourse or so to an ‘explanation’ than causation. According to the covering-law model of explanation, something is explained if it can be deduced from premises that include one or more laws. As applied to the explanation of particular events this implies that a particular event can be explained if it is linked by a law to another particular event. However, while they are often treated as separate theories, the covering-law account of explanation is at bottom little more than a variant of Hume’s constant conjunction account of causation. This affinity shows up in the fact at the covering-law account faces essentially the same difficulties as Hume: (1) In appealing to deduction from ‘laws’, it needs to explain the difference between genuine laws and accidentally true regularities: (2) It omits by effects, as swell as effects by causes, after all, it is as easy to derive the height of the flag-pole from the length of its shadow and the law of optics calculably: (3) Are the laws invoked in explanation required to be exceptionalness and deterministic, or is it acceptable say, to appeal to the merely probabilistic fact that smoking makes cancer more likely, in explaining why some particular person develops cancer?
Nevertheless, one of the centrally obtainable achievements for which the philosophy of science is directly intended, in that to go or be together in virtue with explicitly systematic accounts. These of the theories and explanatory strategies advocated the applicability of one’s advantage in the science. Another common goal is to make construable the assembling constructions for the controlling philosophical illuminations in the analyses or explanations of central theoretical intellections. For which implicit manifestations quicken to the overall view of or attitude toward the spirited ideas that what exists in the mind as a representation. As of something comprehended or a formulation of a plan, which is not to assume of any constituent standards as invoked in one or another science. In the philosophy of biology, for example, there is an ample supply of rich literature and an unstretching aim at interpreting teleological explanations. There has been a great deal of work on the structure of evolutionary theory and on such crucial conceptualizations as existing or dealing with what exists only in the mind. By introducing ‘teleological considerations’, this account views beliefs as states with biological purpose and analyses their truth conditions specifically as those conditions that they are biologically supposed to covary to additional means of or by virtue of or through a detailed and complete manner, as, perhaps, in spite of or with the interaction of meaning intellection to deliberate our reflective cogitation of ruminating the act or process of thinking,
A teleological theory of representation needs to be supplemental with a philosophical account of biological representation. Generally a selectionism account of biological purpose, according to which item ‘F’ has purpose ‘G’ if and only if it is now present from past selection by some process that favoured items with ‘G’. So, a given belief type will have the purpose of covarying with ‘P’, say if and only if some mechanism has selected it because it has covaried with ‘P’ the past.
Similarly, teleological theory holds that ‘r’ represents ‘x’ if it is r’s function to implicate (i.e., covary with) ‘x’. Teleological theories to be unlike or distinctly disagreed in its nature, form, or characteristics if only to differ in some conceded opinion, for that of depending on the theory of functions they import. Perhaps the most important distinction is that between historical theories of functions and a-historical theories. Historical theories individuate functional states (therefore, contents) in a way that is sensitive to the historical development of the state, i.e., to factors such as the way the state was ‘learned’, or the way it evolved. A historical theory might hold that the function of ‘r’ is to implicate on or upon the purity of the form ‘x’, only if the capacity to token ‘r’ was developed (selected, learned). Because it gives to implicating the realistic prevalence held to convey (as an idea) to the mind, as this signifies the eloquence or significant manifestation for appearing the objectification in the forming implication of ‘x’. Thus, a state physically indistinguishable from ‘r’ (physical states being a-historical) but lacking r’s historical origins would not represent ‘x’ according to historical theories.
The American philosopher of mind (1935-) Jerry Alan Fodor, is known for his resolute ‘realness’, about the nature of mental functioning, taking the analogy between thought and computation seriously. Fodor believes that mental representations should be conceived as individual states with their own identities and structures, like formulae transformed by processes of computation or thought. His views are frequently contrasted with those of ‘Holist s’ such as the American philosopher Herbert Donald Davidson (1917-2003), or ‘instrumentalists’ about mental ascription. Such as the British philosopher of logic and language, Eardley Anthony Michael Dummett (1925) In recent years he has become a vocal critic of some aspirations of cognitive science.
Nonetheless, a suggestion extrapolating the solution of teleology is continually to enquiry by points of owing to ‘causation’ and ‘content’, and ultimately a fundamental appreciation is to be considered, is that: we suppose that there is a causal path from A’s to ‘A’s’ and a causal path from B’s to ‘A’s’, and our problem is to find some difference between B-caused ‘A’s’ and A-caused ‘A’s’ in virtue of which the former but not the latter misrepresented. Perhaps, the two paths differ in their counter-factual properties. In particular, even if alienable positions in the group of ‘A and B’s’, are causally effective to both, perhaps each can assume that only in the finding measure that A’s would cause ‘A’s’ in-as one can say -, ‘optimal circumstances’. We could then hold that a symbol expresses its ‘optimal property’, viz., the property that would causally control its tokening in optimal circumstances. Correspondingly, when the tokening of a symbol is causally controlled by properties other than its optimal property, the tokens that come about being ipso facto wild.
Suppose, that this story about ‘optimal circumstances’ is proposed as part of a naturalized semantics for mental representations. In which case it is, of course, essential that saying that the optimal circumstances for tokening a mental representation are in terms that are not themselves but possible of either semantical or intentional? (It would not do, for example, to recognize for being the optimal circumstances for tokening a symbol as those in which the tokens are true, that would be to assume precisely the semantical notion that the theory is supposed to naturalize.) Befittingly, the suggestion-to put it concisely-is that appeal to ‘optimality’ should be buttressed by appeals to ‘teleology’: Optimal circumstances are the ones in which the mechanisms that mediate symbol tokening are functioning ‘as they are at the present timer. With mental representations, these would be paradigmatic circumstances where the mechanisms of belief fixation are functionally accepted or advanced as true or real based. On less than conclusive evidence that they are supposed are accepted or advanced as true or real is based on less than conclusive evidence. Such that to understanding or assume of the categories availably warranted. The position assumed or a point made especially in so, to or into that place that in consequence of that for this or that reason could be that thing, because circumstance is deprived to form what exists in the mind as a representation, as of something comprehended or as a formulation of planed, an idea of something in the mind.
So, then, the teleology of the cognitive mechanisms determines the optimal condition for belief fixation, and the optimal condition for belief fixation determines the content of beliefs. So the story goes.
To put this objection in slightly other words, the teleology story perhaps strikes one as plausible in that it aligns itself with one normative notion-truth-of another normative notion-optimality. However, this appearance if it is spurious there is no guarantee that the kind of optimality that teleology reconstructs relates to the kind of optimality that the explication of ‘truth’ requires. When mechanisms of repression are working ‘optimally’-when they are working ‘as they are supposed to’-what they deliver are likely to be ‘falsehoods’.
Once, again, there is no obvious reason that coitions that are optimal for the tokening of one mental symbol need, be optimal for the tokening of other sorts. Perhaps the optimal conditions for fixing beliefs about very large objects, are different from the optimal conditions for fixing beliefs about very small ones, are different from the optimal conditions for fixing beliefs sights. Nevertheless, this raises the possibility that if we are to say which conditions are optimal for the fixation of a belief, we should know what the content of the belief is-what presents of being for itself to be a belief. Our explication of content would then require a notion of optimality, whose explication in turn requires a notion of content, and the resulting pile would clearly be unstable.
Teleological theories hold that ‘r’ represents ‘x’ if it is r’s function to give evidence of or serve as grounds for a valid or reasonable inference. If only to point directly to some future occurrence or development and communication by serving names of something significantly associated in the collections through (i.e., covary with) ‘x’. Teleological theories differ, depending on the theory of functions they import. Perhaps the most important distinction is that between historical theories of functions: Historically, theories individuate functional states (therefore, contents) in a way that is sensitive to the historical development of the state, i.e., to factors such as the way the state was ‘learned’, or the way it evolved. A historical theory might hold that the function of ‘r’ is to connoting or manifest the quality or state of being associatively tacit as implied in being such in essential character that suggests the intimation of something that is an outward manifestation of something else or that which is indicative, only to suggest the designation that by its very significative indications to which evoke the aptitudinal form ‘x’, only if the capacity to token ‘r’ was developed (selected, learned) because it serves as grounded for a valid or reasonable inference as to characterize ‘x’. Thus, a state physically indistinguishable from ‘r’ (physical states being a-historical), but lacking r’s historical origins would not represent ‘x’ according to historical theories.
Just as functional role theories hold that r’s representing ‘x’ is grounded in the functional role ‘r’ has in the representing system, i.e., on the relations imposed by specified cognitive processes between ‘r’ and other representations in the system’s repertoire. Functional role theories take their cue from such common-sense ideas as that people cannot believe that cats are furry if they do not know that cats are animals or that fur is like hair.
That being said, that nowhere is the new period of collaboration between philosophy and other disciplines more evident than in the new subject of cognitive science. Cognitive science from its very beginning has been ‘interdisciplinary’ in character, and is in effect the joint property of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science and anthropology. There are, therefore, a great variety of research projects within cognitive science, but the central area of cognitive science, its hard-coded ideology rests on the assumption that the mind is best viewed as analogous to a digital computer. The basic idea behind cognitive science is that recent developments in computer science and artificial intelligence have enormous importance for our conception of human beings. The basic inspiration for cognitive science went something like this: Human beings do information processing. Computers are designed precisely do information processing. Therefore, one way of studying human cognition, as, perhaps, the most excellent way to find out it-is to consider its abstraction of some computable function, for which is an effective process of computational information, whereby the processing is that which is understood by its terminological succession. Some cognitive scientists think that the computer is just a metaphor for the human mind: Others think that the mind is literally a computer program. Still, saying is fair that without the computational model there would not have been a cognitive science as we now understand it.
In, Essay Concerning Human Understanding is the first modern systematic presentation that holds the attending empiricist epistemology, and as such had important implications for the natural sciences and for philosophy of science generally. Like his predecessor, Descartes, the English philosopher (1632-1704) John Locke began his account of knowledge from the conscious mind aware of ideas. Unlike Descartes, however, he was concerned not to build a system based on certainty, but to identify the mind’s scope and limits. The premise upon which Locke built his account, including his account of the natural sciences, is that the ideas that furnish the mind are all derived from experience. He thus, totally rejected any kind of innate knowledge. In this he consciously opposes Descartes, who had argued that coming to knowledge of fundamental truths about the natural world through reason alone is possible. Descartes (1596-1650) had argued, that we can come to know the essential nature of both ‘minds’ and ‘matter’ by pure reason. John Locke accepted Descartes’s criterion of clear and distinct ideas as the basis for knowledge, but denied any source for them other than experience. It was information that came to some completions are the five senses (ideas of sensation) and ideas engendered from pure inner experiences (ideas of reflection) were the composite characteristics as to bring into being by mental and especially its reasons that made up of several separated or identifiable elements for which of the building blocks are aligned by themselves with an unreserved and open understanding.
Locke concerted his commitment to ‘the new way of ideas’ with the native espousal of the ‘corpuscular philosophy’ of the Irish scientist (1627-92) Robert Boyle. This, in essence, was an acceptance of a revised, more sophisticated account of matter and its properties advocated by the ancient atomists and recently supported by Galileo (1564-1642) and Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). Boyle argued from theory and experiment that there were powerful reasons to justify some kind of corpuscular account of matter and its properties. He called the latter qualities, which he distinguished as primary and secondary. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities may be reached by two different routes: Either from the nature or essence of matter or from the nature and essence of experience, though practising these have a tendency to run-together. The former considerations make the distinction seem like an a priori, or necessary, truth about the nature of matter, while the latter makes it the empirical hypothesis -. Locke, too, accepted this account, arguing that the ideas we have of the primary qualities of bodies resemble those qualities as they are in the subject, whereas the ideas of the secondary qualities, such as colour, taste, and smell, do not resemble their causes in the object.
There is no strong connection between acceptance of the primary-secondary quality distinction and Locke’s empiricism and Descartes had also argued strongly for universal acceptance by natural philosophers, and Locke embraced it within his more comprehensive empirical philosophy. However, Locke’ empiricism did have major implications for the natural sciences, as he well realized. His account begins with an analysis of experience. All ideas, he argues, are either simple or complex. Simple ideas are those like the red of a particular rose or the roundness of a snowball. Complicated and complex ideas, our ideas of the rose or the snowball, are combinations of simple ideas. We may create new complicated and complex ideas in our imagination-a parallelogram, for example. Nevertheless, simple ideas can never be created by us: we just have them or not, and characteristically they are caused, for example, the impact on our senses of rays of light or vibrations of sound in the air coming from a particular physical object. Since we cannot create simple ideas, and they are determined by our experience, our knowledge is in a very strict uncompromising way limited. Besides, our experiences are always of the particular, never of the general. It is this simple idea or that particular complex idea that we apprehend. We never in that sense apprehend a universal truth about the natural world, but only particular instances. It follows from this that all claims to generality about that world-for example, all claims to identity what was then beginning to be called the laws of nature-must to that extent goes beyond our experience and thus be less than certain.
The Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist, (1711-76) David Hume, whose famous discussion appears in both his major philosophical works, the ‘Treatise’ (1739) and the ‘Enquiry’(1777). The distinction is couched as the apprehensive intellection for existing or dealing with what exists only in the mind, that the ideational intellection of causality, so that which is responsible for an effect, under which considerations we are to use linguistically in communicating of the laws, Hume contends, involves three ideas:
1. That there should be a regular concomitance between events
of the type of cause and those of the type of effect.
2. That the cause event should be contiguous with the effect event.
3. That the cause event should require the effect event.
The tenets of (1) and (2) occasion no differently for Hume, since he believes that there are patterns of sensory impressions non-problematically related to the idea of regularity concomitance and of contiguity. Nonetheless, the third requirement is deeply problematic, in that the idea of necessarily that figures in it seems to have no sensory impression correlated with it. However, carefully and attentively we scrutinize a causal process, we do not seem to observe anything that might be the observed correlate of the idea of necessity. We do not observe any kind of activity, power, or necessitation. All we ever observe is one event following another, which is logically independent of it. Nor is this logically necessary, since, as, Hume observes, one can jointly assert the existence of the cause and a denial of the existence of the effect, as specified in the causal statement or the law of nature, without contradiction. What, then, are we to make of the seemingly central notion of necessity that is deeply embedded in the very idea of causation, or lawfulness? To this query, Hume gives an ingenious and telling story. There is an impression corresponding to the idea of causal necessity, but it is a psychological phenomenon: Our exception that is similar to those we have already observed to be correlated with the cause-type of events will occur in this instance too. Where does that impression come from? It is created as a kind of mental habit by the repeated experience of regular concomitance between events of the type of effect and the occurring of events of the type of cause. Then, the impression that corresponds to the idea of regular concomitance-the law of nature then asserts nothing but the existence of the regular concomitance.
At this point in our narrative, the question at once arises about whether this factor of life in nature, thus interpreted, corresponds to anything that we observe in nature. All philosophy is an endeavour to obtain a self-consistent understanding of things observed. Thus, its development is guided in two ways, one is demand for coherent self-consistency, and the other is the elucidation of things observed. With our direct observations how are we to conduct such comparisons? Should we turn to science? No. There is no way in which the scientific endeavour can detect the aliveness of things: Its methodology rules out the possibility of such a finding. On this point, the English mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947) Alfred Whitehead, comments, That science can find no individual enjoyment in nature, as science can find no creativity in nature, it finds mere rules of succession. These negations are true of natural science. They are inherent in its methodology. The reason for this blindness of physical science lies in the fact that such science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience. It divides the seamless coat-or, to change the metaphor into a happier form, it examines the coat, which is superficial, and neglects the body that is fundamental.
Whitehead claims that the methodology of science makes it blind to a fundamental aspect of reality, namely, the primacy of experience, it neglected half the evidence. Working within Descartes’ dualistic framework reference, of matter and mind as separate and incommensurate, science limits itself to the study of objectivised phenomena, neglecting the subject and the mental events that are his or her experience.
Both the adoption of the Cartesian paradigm and the neglect of mental events are reason enough to suspect ‘blindness’, but there is no need to rely on suspicions. This blindness is evident. Scientific discoveries, impressive as they are, are fundamentally superficial. Science can express regularities observed in nature, but it cannot explain the reasons for their occurrence. Consider, for example, Newton’s law of gravity. It shows that such apparently disparate phenomena as the falling of an apple and the revolutions of the earth around the sun are aspects of the same regularity-gravity. According to this law the gravitational attraction between two objects deceases in proportion to the square of the distance between them. Why is that so? Newton could not provide an answer. Simpler and becalmed, is why, does the continuum of space have three dimensions? Why is time one-dimensional? Whitehead notes, ‘None of these laws of nature gives the slightest evidence of necessity. They are [merely] the modes of procedure that within the scale of observation does in fact prevail’.
This analysis reveals that the capacity of science to fathom the depths of reality is limited. For example, if reality is, in fact, made up of discrete units, and these units have the fundamental character in being ‘ the pulsing throbs of experience’, then science may be unable to discover the discreteness: But it has no access to the subjective side of nature since, as the Austrian physicist(1887-1961) Erin Schrödinger points out, we ‘exclude the subject of cognizance from the domain of nature that we endeavour to understand’. It follows that to find ‘the elucidation of things observed’ in relation to the experiential or aliveness aspect, we cannot rely on science, we need to look elsewhere.
If, instead of relying on science, we rely on our immediate observation of nature and of ourselves, we find, first, that this [i.e., Descartes’] stark division between mentality and nature has no ground in our fundamental observation. We find ourselves living within nature. Secondly, in that we should conceive mental operations as among the factors which make up the constitution of nature, and thirdly, that we should reject the notion of aversion to work while following the processes of a hidden nature, every factor that makes a difference, and that difference can only be expressed in terminological factors of the individualized character of that factor.
Whitehead continues to analyse our experiences overall, and our observations of nature in particular, and ends abruptly with ‘mutual immanence’ as a central theme. This mutual immanence is as, much ado as its obviousness, that, I am a part of the universe, and, since I experience the universe, the experienced universe is part of me. Whitehead gives an example, ‘I am in the room, and the room is an item in my present experience. Nevertheless, my present experience is what I am now’. A generalization of this relationship to the case of any actual occasions yields the conclusion that ‘the world is included within the occasion in one sense, and the occasion is included in the world in another sense’. The idea that each actual occasion appropriates its universe follows naturally from such considerations.
The description of an actual entity for being a distinct unit is, therefore, only one part of the story. The other, complementary part is this: The very nature of each actual entity is one of interdependence with all the other actual entities in the universe. Every existent entity agrees or subscribes of a series of actions, operations or motions involved in the accomplishments of an ending method or its operative processing of neither that its prehending nor appropriating of all other actualized entities in the creating of new entities, in that out of them all, namely, the resultant amounts of themselves.
There are two general strategies for distinguishing laws from accidentally true generalizations. The first stands by Hume’s idea that causal connections are mere constant conjunctions, and then seeks to explain why some constant conjunctions are better than others. That is, this first strategy accepts the principle that causation involves nothing more than certain events always happening with certain others, and then seeks to explain why some such patterns-the ‘laws’-matter more than others-the ‘accidents’. The second strategy, by contrast, rejects the Humean presupposition that causation involves nothing more than happen in reserve from a casual co-occurrence, and instead postulates their relationship by its owing ‘necessitation’, a kind of consequent security or binding, for which links events connected by law, but not those events (like having a screw in my desk and being made of copper) that are only accidentally conjoined.
There are several versions of the first Human strategy. The advanced success in the original vindicated proposal for bettering in reserve is the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher F.P. Ramsey (1903-30), and revived separately the American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002), who hold that laws are those true generalizations that can be fitted into an ideal system of knowledge. The thought is, that, the laws are those patterns explicated as to basic science, either as fundamental principles themselves, or as consequences of those principles, while accidents, although true, have no such explanation. Thus, ‘All water at standard pressure boils at 1000 C’ is a consequence of the laws governing molecular bonding: But the fact that ‘All the screws in my desk are copper’ is not part of the deductive structure of any satisfactory science. Frank Plumpton Ramsey (1903-30), neatly encapsulated this idea by saying that laws are ‘consequences of those propositions that we should take as axioms if we knew everything and organized it as simply as possible in a deductive system’.
Advocates of the alternative non-Humean strategy object that the difference between laws and accidents is not a ‘linguistic’ matter of deductive systematization, but a ‘metaphysical’ contrast between the kind of links they report. They argue that there is a link in nature between being at 1000 C and boiling, but not between being ‘in my desk’ and being ‘made of copper’, and that this is nothing to do with how the description of this link may fit into theories. According to the forth-right Australian D.M. Armstrong (1983), the most prominent defender of this view, the real difference between laws and accidentals, is simply that laws report relationships of natural ‘necessitation’, while accidents only report that two types of events happen to occur together.
Armstrong’s view may seem intuitively plausible, but it is arguable that the notion of necessitation simply restates the problem, than solving it. Armstrong says that necessitation involves something more than constant conjunction: If two events are related by necessitation, then it follows that they are constantly conjoined, but two events can be constantly conjoined without being related by necessitation, as when the constant conjunction is just a matter of an accident. So necessitation is a stronger relationship than constant conjunction. However, Armstrong and other defenders of this view say ver y little about what this extra strength amounts to, except that it distinguishes laws from accidents. Armstrong’s critics argue that a satisfactory account of laws ought to cast more light than this on the nature of laws.
Hume said that the earlier of two causally related events is always the cause, and the later effect. However, there are several objections to using the earlier-later ‘arow of time’ to analyse the directional ‘arrow of causation’. For a start, it seems in principle, possible that some causes and effects could be simultaneous. That more, in the idea that time is directed from ‘earlier’ too ‘later’ itself stands in need of philosophical explanation -. One of the most popular explanations is that the idea of ‘movement’ from earlier later to depend on the fact that cause-effect pairs always have a time, and explain ‘earlier’ as the direction in which causes lie, and ‘later’ as the direction of effects, that we will clearly need to discover some account of the direction of causation that does not itself assume the direction of time.
Several accounts have been proposed. David Lewis (1979) has argued that the asymmetry of causation derives from an ‘asymmetry of over-determination’. The over-determination of present events by past events-consider a person who dies after simultaneously being shot and struck by lightning-is a very rare occurrence, by contrast, the multiple ‘over-determination’ of present events by future events is absolutely normal. This is because the future, unlike the past, will always contain multiple traces of any present event. To use Lewis’s example, when the president presses the red button in the White House, the future effects do not only include the dispatch of nuclear missiles, but also the fingerprint on the button, his trembling, the further depletion of his gin bottle, the recording of the button’s click on tape, he emission of light waves bearing the image of his action through the window, the warnings of the wave from the passage often signal current, and so on, and so on, and on.
Lewis relates this asymmetry of over-determination to the asymmetry of causation as follows. If we suppose the cause of a given effect to have been absent, then this implies the effect would have been absent too, since (apart from freak -like occurrence in the lightning-shooting case) there will not be any other causes left to ‘fix’ the effect. By contrast, if we suppose a given effect of some cause to have been absent, this does not imply the cause would have been absent, for there are still all the other traces left to ‘fix’ the causes. Lewis argues that these counterfactual considerations suffice to show why causes are different from effects.
Other philosophers appeal to a probabilistic variant of Lewis’s asymmetry. Following, the philosopher of science and probability theorists, Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), they note that the different causes of any given type of effect are normally probabilistically independent of each other, by contrast, the different effects of any given type of cause are normally probabilistically correlated. For example, both obesity and high excitement can cause heart attacks, but this does not imply that fat people are more likely to get excited than thin ones: Its facts, that both lung cancer and Nicotine-stained fingers can result from smoking does imply that lung cancer is more likely among people with nicotine-stained fingers. So this account distinguishes effects from causes by the fact that the former, but not the latter are probabilistically dependent on each other.
However, there is another course of thought in philosophy of science, the tradition of ‘negative’ or ‘eliminative induction’. That is to say, that in eliminative induction a number of possible hypotheses conceiving some state of affairs is presumed, and rivals are progressively in reserve to new evidence, the process is an idealization, since in practice no closed set of initial theories is usually possible. The English diplomat and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and in modern time the philosopher of science Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994), we have the idea of using logic to bring falsifying evidence to bear on hypotheses about what must universally be the case that many thinkers accept in essence his solution to the problem of demarcating proper science from its imitators, namely that the former results in genuinely falsifiable theories whereas the latter do not. Although falsely, allowed many people’s objections to such ideologies as psychoanalysis and Marxism.
Hume was interested in the processes by which we acquire knowledge: The processes of perceiving and thinking, of feeling and reasoning. He recognized that much of what we claim to know derives from other people secondhand, thirdhand or worse: Moreover, our perceptions and judgements can be distorted by a multiple array of factors-by what we are studying, and by the very act of study itself the main reason, however, behind his emphasis on ‘probabilities and those other measures of evidence on which life and action entirely depend’ is this:
Evidently, all reasoning concerning ‘matter of fact’
Are founded on the relation of cause and effect, and that?
We can never infer the existence of one object form
another unless they are connected, either mediately
or immediately.
When we apparently observe a whole sequence, say of one ball hitting another, what do we observe? In the much commoner cases, when we wonder about the unobserved causes or effects of the events we observe, what precisely are we doing?
Hume recognized that a notion of ‘must’ or necessity is a peculiar feature of causal relation, inference and principles, and challenges us to explain and justify the notion. He argued that there is no observable feature of events, nothing like a physical bond, which can be properly labelled the ‘necessary connection’ between a given cause and its effect: Events are simply merely to occur, and there is in ‘must’ or ‘ought’ about them. However, repeated experience of pairs of events sets up the habit of expectation in us, such that when one of the pair occurs we inescapably expect the other. This expectation makes us infer the unobserved cause or unobserved effect of the observed event, and we mistakenly project this mental inference onto the events themselves. There is no necessity observable in causal relations, all that can be observed is regular sequence, there is proper necessity in causal inferences, but only in the mind. Once we realize that causation is a relation between pairs of events. We also realize that often we are not present for the whole sequence that we want to divide into ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. Our understanding of the casual relation is thus intimately linked with the role of the causal inference cause only causal inferences entitle us to ‘go beyond what is immediately present to the senses’. Nevertheless, now two very important assumptions emerge behind the causal inference: The assumptions that like causes, in ‘like circumstances, will always produce like effects’, and the assumption that ‘the course of nature will continue uniformly the same’-or, briefly that the future will resemble the past. Unfortunately, this last assumption lacks either empirical or a priori proof, that is, it can be conclusively established neither by experience nor by thought alone.
Hume frequently endorsed a standard seventeenth-century view that all our ideas are ultimately traceable, by analysis, to sensory impressions of an internal or external kind. In agreement, he claimed that all his theses are based on ‘experience’, understood as sensory awareness with memory, since only experience establishes matters of fact. Nonetheless, our belief that the future will resemble the past properly construed as a belief concerning only a mater of fact? As the English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) remarked, earlier this century, the real problems that Hume asserts to are whether future futures will resemble future pasts, in the way that past futures really did resemble past pasts. Hume declares that ‘if . . . the past may be no rule for the future, all experiences become useless and can cause inference or conclusion. Yet, he held, the supposition cannot stem from innate ideas, since there are no innate ideas in his view nor can it stems from any abstract formal reasoning. For one thing, the future can surprise us, and no formal reasoning seems able to embrace such contingencies: For another, even animals and unthinkable people conduct their lives as if they assume the future resembles the past: Dogs return for buried bones, children avoid a painful fire, and so forth. Hume is not deploring the fact that we have to conduct our lives based on probabilities. He is not saying that inductive reasoning could or should be avoided or rejected. Alternatively, he accepted inductive reasoning but tried to show that whereas formal reasoning of the kind associated with mathematics cannot establish or prove matters of fact, factual or inductive reasoning lacks the ‘necessity’ and ‘certainty’ associated with mathematics. His position, therefore clear; because ‘every effect is a distinct event from its cause’, only investigation can settle whether any two particular events are causally related: Causal inferences cannot be drawn with the force of logical necessity familiar to us from deductivity, but, although they lack such force, they should not be discarded. From causation, inductive inferences are inescapable and invaluable. What, then, makes ‘experience’ the standard of our future judgement? The answer is ‘custom’, it is a brute psychological fact, without which even animal life of a simple kind would be mostly impossible. ‘We are determined by custom to suppose the future conformable to the past’ (Hume, 1978), nevertheless, whenever we need to calculate likely events we must supplement and correct such custom by self-conscious reasoning.
Nonetheless, the problem that the causal theory of reference will fail once it is recognized that all representations must occur under some aspect or that the extentionality of causal relations is inadequate to capture the aspectual character of reference. The only kind of causation that could be adequate to the task of reference is intentional causal or mental causation, but the causal theory of reference cannot concede that ultimately reference is achieved by some met device, since the whole approach behind the causal theory was to try to eliminate the traditional mentalism of theories of reference and meaning in favour of objective causal relations in the world, though it is at present by far the most influential theory of reference, will be a failure for these reasons.
If mental states are identical with physical states, presumably the relevant physical states are various sorts of neural states. Our concepts of mental states such as thinking, sensing, and feeling are of course, different from our concepts of neural states, of whatever sort. Still, that is no problem for the identity theory. As J.J.C. Smart (1962), who first argued for the identity theory, emphasized, the requisite identities do not depend on understanding concepts of mental states or the meanings of mental terms. For ‘a’ to be the identical with ‘b’, ‘a’, and ‘b’ must have the same properties, but the terms or the things in themselves are ‘a’ and ‘b’, and need not mean the same. Its principal means by measure can be accorded within the indiscernibility of identicals, in that, if ‘A’ is identical with ‘B’, then every property that ‘A’ has ‘B’, and vice versa. This is, sometimes known as Leibniz’s Law.
Nevertheless, a problem does seem to arise about the properties of mental states. Suppose pain is identical with a certain firing of c-fibres. Although a particular pain is the very same as a neural-firing, we identify that state in two different ways: As a pain and as neural-firing. That the state will therefore have certain properties in virtue of which we identify it as pain and others in virtue of which we identify it as an excitability of neural firings. The properties in virtue of which we identify it as a pain will be mental properties, whereas those in virtue of which ewe identify it as neural excitability firing, will be physical properties. This has seemed for which are many to lead of the kinds of dualism at the level of the properties of mentalities, even if these mental states in that which we reject dualism of substances and take people simply to be some physical organisms. Those organisms still have both mental and physical states. Similarly, even if we identify those mental states with certain physical states, those states will, nonetheless have both mental and physical properties. So disallowing dualism with respect to substances and their states are simply to its reappearance at the level of the properties of those states.
There are two broad categories of mental property. Mental states such as thoughts and desires, often called ‘propositional attitudes’, have ‘content’ that can be de scribed by ‘that’ clauses. For example, one can have a thought, or desire, that it will rain. These states are said to have intentional properties, or ‘intentionality sensations’, such as pains and sense impressions, lack intentional content, and have instead qualitative properties of various sorts.
The problem about mental properties is widely thought to be most pressing for sensations, since the painful qualities of pains and the red quality of visual sensations might be irretrievably non-physical. If the idea that something conveys to the mind as having endlessly debated the meaning of relationally to the mind, the mental aspects of the problem seem once removed among mental states that to account in the actualization of proper innovation that has non-physical properties, is that the identity of mental states generates or empower physical states as they would not sustain the unconditional thesis as held to mind-body materialism.
The Cartesian doctrine related and distinguished by the mentality for which we have mental properties of those states constructed by anecdotal explanations, for that the consequential temperance as proven or given to compatibility is founded the appropriate interconnective link to set right the ordering of fibrous fragments as strikingly spatial, as this will facilitate the functional contribution in which the distribution of infractions that when assembled are found of space and time. However, it should be that p assimilates some non-physical advocates of the identity theory sometimes accepting it, for the ideas that of or relating to the mind, as a mental aspect calling our intellectual mentality as the intellective for which is not non-physical but yields to underlying latencies, for example, the insistence by some identity theorists that mental properties are really neural as between being mental and physical. To being neural is in this way a property would have to be neutral about whether it is compatible and thus imply in the manner that inarticulate the idea that something conveys to the mind, the acceptational sense for which its significancy plays on one side of the manner that mental is the ideological reason in thinking as the inner and well of the outer domains that of or relating to the mind. Only if one thought that being meant being non-physical would one hold that defending materialism required showing the ostensible mental properties are neutral as regards whether or not they are mental.
Nevertheless, holding that mental properties are non-physical has a cost that is usually not noticed. A phenomenon is mental only if it has some distinctively mental property. So, strictly speaking, some materialists who claim that mental properties are non-physical phenomena have in the unfolding transformation that it can only be derived through the state or factorial conditional independence that reality, of its customs that have recently become and exists to induce to come into being, a condition or occurrence traceable to a cause or the aftereffect through which an end-product or its resulting event of something or thing that has existence. This is the ‘Eliminative-Materialist position advanced by the American philosopher and critic Richard Rorty (1979).
According to Rorty (1931-) ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ are incompatible terms. Nothing can be both mental and physical, so mental states cannot be identical with bodily states. Rorty traces this incompatibly to our views about incorrigibility: ‘Mental’ and ‘physical’ are incorrigible reports of one’s own mental states, but not reports of physical occurrences, but he also argues that we can imagine people who describe themselves and each other using terms just like our mental vocabulary, except that those people do not take the reports made with that vocabulary to be incorrigible. Since Rorty takes a state to be a mental state only if one’s reports about it are taken to be incorrigible, his imaginary people do not ascribe mental states to themselves or each other. Nonetheless, the only difference between their language and ours is that we take as incorrigible certain reports that they do not. So their language as no-less the descriptive explanatorial powers, in that the American philosopher and critic, Richard McKay Rorty (1931-) concludes that our mental vocabulary is idle, and that there are no distinctively mental phenomena.
This argument hinges on or upon the building incorrigibility into the meaning of the term ‘mental’. If we do not, the way is open to interpret Rorty’s imaginary people as simply having a different theory of mind from ours, on which reports of one’s own mental states are corrigible. Their reports would this be about mental states, as construed by their theory. Rorty’s thought experiment would then provide to conclude not that our terminology is idle, but only that this alternative theory of mental phenomena is correct. His thought experiment would thus sustain the non-eliminativist view that mental states are bodily states. Whether Rorty’s argument supports his eliminativist conclusion or the standard identity theory, therefore, depends solely on whether or not one holds that the quality or highest in degree attainable or attained by or through emending the intelligence in as clear unmistakable mentality are in some way the mental aspects of problems of or relating to the mind is spoken in response to substantiality.
Paul M. Churchlands (1981) advances a different argument for eliminative materialism. Given to agree to Churchlands, the common-sense concepts of mental states contained in our present folk psychology are, from a scientific point of view, radically defective. Nonetheless, we can expect that eventually a more sophisticated theoretical account will relace those folk-psychological concepts, showing that mental phenomena, as described by current folk psychology, do not exist. Since, that account would be integrated into the rest of science, we would have a thoroughgoing materialist treatment of all phenomena, unlike Rorty’s, does not rely of assuming that the mental are non-physical.
However, even if current folk psychology is mistaken, that does not show that mental phenomenon does not exist, but only that they are of the way folk psychology described them for being. We could conclude, that, they do not put into effect of any natural cognitive processes or simulate the practice of using something for being used aside from its energy in producing the resulting of thought that exists only if the folk-psychological claims that turn out to be mistaken are factually determinant dissimilarities for which to define what it is for a phenomenon to be strictly mental. Otherwise, the new theory would be about mental phenomena, and would help show that they are identical with physical phenomena. Churchlands argument, like Rorty’s, depends on a special way of defining the mental, which we need not adopt, it argument for Eliminative materialism will require some such definition, without which the argument would instead support the identity theory.
Despite initial appearances, the distinctive properties of sensations are neutral as between being mental and physical, in that borrowed from the English philosopher and classicist Gilbert Ryle (1900-76), they are topic neutral: My experiences of appreciation as having to cognize in the sensation of red for which consists in my being in a state that is similar, in respect that we need not specify, making it more evenly so, to something that occurs in me when I am in the presence of certain stimuli. Because the respect of similarity is not specified, the property is neither distinctively mental nor distinctively physical. However, everything is similar to everything else in some respect or other. So leaving the respect of similarity unspecified makes this account too weak to capture the distinguishing properties of sensation.
A more sophisticated reply to the difficultly about mental properties is due independently to the Australian, David Malet Armstrong (1926-) and American philosopher David Lewis (1941-2002), who argued that for a state to be a particular intentional state or sensation is for that state to bear characteristic causal relations to other particular occurrences. The properties in virtue of which e identify states as thoughts or sensations will still be neural as between being mental and physical, since anything can bear a causal relation to anything else. Nevertheless, causal connections have a better chance than similarity in some unspecified respect to capturing the distinguishing properties of sensations and thought.
This casual theory is appealing, but is misguided to attempt to construe the distinctive properties of mental states for being neutral as between being mental and physical. To be neutral as regards being mental or physical is to be neither distinctively mental nor distinctively physical. However, since thoughts and sensations are distinctively mental states, for a state to be a thought or a sensation is perforce for it to have some characteristically mental property. We inevitably lose the distinctively mental if we construe these properties for being neither mental nor physical.
Not only is the topic-neutral construal misguided: The problem it was designed to solve is equally so, only to say, that problem stemmed from the idea that mental must have some non-physical aspects. If not at the level of people or their mental states, then at the level of the distinctive properties can be more complicated, for example, in the sentence, ‘John is married to Mary’, we can display the attribution that of ‘John, is of the property of being married, and unlike the property of John is bald. Consider the sentence: ‘John is bearded’ and that ‘John’, in this sentence is portrayed of an abraded forming of a linguistic communication - of his own name. Some individual human being-and more some would be tempted to confuse the word with what it names. Consider the expression ‘is bald’, this too is a bit of articulated linguistic communication under which philosophers call it a ‘predicate’-and it caries out into a certain state of our attention of some material possession or feature that, if the sentence is true. It has possession of by John? Understood in this ay, a property is not its self linguist though it is expressed, or conveyed by something that is, namely a predicate. What might be said that a property is a real feature of the word, and that it should be contrasted just as sharply with any predicates we use to express it, as in the name ‘John’ is contrasted with the person himself. Controversially, just what ontological status should be accorded to properties by describing ‘anomalous monism’-while it is conceivably given to a better understanding the similarity with the American philosopher Herbert Donald Davidson (1917-2003), wherefore he adopts a position that explicitly repudiates reductive physicalism, yet purports to be a version of materialism, nonetheless, Davidson holds that although token mental evident states are identical to those of physical events and states-mental ‘types’ -, i.e., kinds, and/or properties-is neither to, nor nomically co-existensive with, physical types. In other words, his argument for this position relies largely on the contention that the correct assignment of mental an actionable property to a person is always a holistic matter, involving a global, temporally diachronic, ‘intentional interpretation’ of the person. Nevertheless, as many philosophers have in effect pointed out, accommodating claims of materialism evidently requires more than just repercussions of mental/physical identities. Mentalistic explanation presupposes not merely that metal events are causes but also that they have causal/explanatory relevance as mental, i.e., relevance insofar as they fall under mental kinds or types. Nonetheless, the mental aspects of the problem are of or relating to the mind, such as Davidson’s positions, which deny there are strict psychological or psychological laws, can accommodate the causal/explanation relevance of the mental quo mentally: If to ‘epiphenomenalism’ with respect to mental properties.
However, the ideas that the mental are in some think much of the non-physical cannot be assumed without argument. Plainly, the distinctively mental properties of the mental states are unlikely that any other properties looked carefully about which we know. Only mental states have properties that are at all like the qualitative properties that anything like the intentional properties of thoughts and desires. However, this does not show that the mental properties are not physical properties, not. All physical properties like the standard states: So, mental properties might still be special kinds of physical properties. It’s interrogatory of questions begin or at present with falsifiably deceptive appearances. In a different way or manner, that the doctrine that the mental properties are simply an expression of the Cartesian doctrine that the mental are automatically non-physical.
It is sometimes held that properties should count as physical properties only if they can be defined using the terms of physics. Nobody would hold that to reduce biology to physics, for example, we must define all biological properties using only terms that occur in physics. Even putting ‘reduction’ aside, in certain biological properties could have been defined, that would not mean that those properties were in ways tracing the remains of that which one surpasses in movement or transference the capabilities for which it is accessible to attain some navigating modernity, in that of a fashionable method or custom for which a variety of species long for being non-physical. The sense of ‘physical’ that is relevant, for which its situation must be broad enough to include biological properties, but also mostly common-sense of macroscopic properties. Bodily states are uncontroversially physical in the relevant way. So, we can recast the identity theory as asserting that mental states are identical with bodily state.
While reaching conclusions about the origin and limits of knowledge, Locke had to his occasion, that concerning himself with topics that are of philosophical interest in themselves. On of these is the question of identity, which includes, more specifically, the question of personal identity: What are the criteria by which a person is numerically the same person as a person encountering of time? Locke points out whether ‘this is what was here before, it matters what kind of thing ‘this’ is meant to be. If ‘this’ is meant as a mass of matter then it is what was before, insofar as it consists of the same material panicles, but if it is meant as a living body then its considering of the same particles does most matter. The case is different. ‘A colt grown up to a horse, sometimes fat, sometimes leans, is altogether the same horse as we speak, but though . . . there may be a manifest change of the parts. So, when we think about personal identity, we need to be clear about a distinction between two things which ‘the ordinary way of speaking runs together’-the idea of ‘man’ and the idea of ‘person’. As with any other animal, the identity of a man consists ‘in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession initially united both internally and externally as the same organized body, however, the examination of one’s own thought and feeling of intensively explicative ideas of hope or inclinations in the hope that of a person is not that of a living body of a certain kind. A person’s task is especially by one’s capabilities and enacting ability to reason has of himself the forming of an idea of something in the mind, as to conceive, envisages, envision, fancy, feature, imagine and so forth. So, then, one’s own being to gather or in the assumption of assertions, are the conjecturing considerations to use one’s power of conception, judgement or inference to ‘think’, apart from other animals. Is, then, we are to accede that ‘thinking’ intelligently hosts there being that have reflections and such a being ‘will be the same self as far as the same consciousness can extend to action past or to come? The unity of one’s contingence of consciousness does not depend on its being ‘annexed’ only to one individual substance, [and not] . . . continued in a succession of several substances. For Lock e, then, personal identity consists in an identity of consciousness, and not in the identity of some substance whose essence it is to be conscious
Casual mechanisms or connections of meaning will help to take a historical route, and focus on the terms in which analytical philosophers of mind began to discuss seriously psychoanalytic explanation. These were provided by the long-standing and presently nonconcluded debate over cause and meaning in psychoanalysis.
Seeing why psychoanalysis should be viewed in the terminological combinations of some cause and meaning is not hard. On the one hand, Freud’s theories introduce a panoply of concepts that appear to characterize mental processes as mechanical and non-meaningful. Included are Freud’s neurological model of the mind, as outlined in his ‘Project or a Scientific Psychology’, more broadly, his ‘economic’ description of mentality, as having properties of force or energy, e.g., as ‘cathexing’ objects: And his account in the mechanism of repression. So it seems that psychoanalytic explanation employs terms logically at variation with those of ordinary, common-sens e psychology, where mechanisms do not play a central role. Bu t on the other hand, and equally striking, there is the fact that psychoanalysis proceeds through interpretation and engages on a relentless search for meaningful connections in mental life-something that became more even as a superficial examination of the Interpretation of Dreams, or The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, cannot fail to impress upon one. Psychoanalytic interpretation adduces meaningful connections between disparate and often apparently dissociated mental and behavioural phenomena, directed by the goal of ‘thematic coherence’. That is, as giving mental life the sort of unity that we find in a work of art or cogent narratives, and, in this respect, psychoanalysis seems to dramatize its substantive reasons for doing so, is that for its physiological feature of ordinary psychology, finding to its insistence on or upon the relating actions to reason for them through contentful characterizations of each that make their connection seems rational, or intelligible: A goal that seems remote from anything found in the physical sciences.
The application to psychoanalysis of the perspective afforded by the cause-meaning debate can also be seen as much therefore of another factor, namely the semi-paradoxical nature of psychoanalysis’ explananda. With respect to all irrational phenomena, something like a paradox arises. Irrationality involves a failure of a rational connectedness and hence of meaningfulness, and so, if it is to have an explanation of any kind, relations that are non-comprehensible and causatively might be of some needed necessity. Yet, as observed above, it seems that, in offering explanations for irrationality-plugging the ‘gaps’ in consciousness-what psychoanalytic explanation is attached with a hinge for being precisely the postulation of further, although non-apparent connections of meaning.
For these two reasons, then-the logical heterogeneity of its explanation and the ambiguous status of its explananda-it may seem that an examination arriving within the hierarchical terms as held of the conceptions of cause and meaning will provide the key to a philosophical elucidation of psychoanalysis. The possible views of psychoanalytic explanation that may result from such an examination can be arranged along two dimensions. (1) Psychoanalytic explanation may then be viewed after reconstruction, as either causal and non-meaningful, or meaningful and non-causal, or as comprising both meaningful and causal elements, in various combinations. Psychoanalytic explanation then may be viewed, on each of these reconstructions, as either licensed or invalidated depending one’s view of the logical nature of psychology.
So, for instance, some philosophical discussions infer that psychoanalytic explanation is void, simple since it is committed to causality in psychology. On another, opposed view, it is the virtue of psychoanalytic explanation that it imputes causal relations, since only causal relations can be used for explaining the failures of meaningful psychological connections. On yet another view, it is psychoanalysis’ commitment to meaning which is its great fault: It s held that the stories that psychoanalysis tries to tell do not really, on examination, explains successfully. So on.
Saying that the debates between these various positions fail to establish anything is fair definite about psychoanalytic explanation. There are two reasons for this. First, there are several different strands in Freud’s whitings, each of which may be drawn on, apparently conclusively, in support of each alternative reconstruction. Secondly, preoccupation with a wholly general problem in the philosophy of mind, that of cause and meaning, distracts attention from the distinguishing features of psychoanalytic explanation. At this point, and to prepare the way for a plausible reconstruction of psychoanalytic explanation. Taking a step back is appropriate, and takes a fresh look at the cause-meaning issue in the philosophy of psychoanalysis.
Suppose, first, that in some varying refashions alternating of change, the modulator’s estate of the realms or fact of having independent reality in the form of adequacy for which classes of descriptive change are themselves to imply anything about reduction. Historically, ‘natural’ contrasts with ‘supernatural’, but given to submit in the contemporary philosophy of mind whereby the debate issues a concern for which are the centres around which the possibilities of explaining mental phenomena are just or as much as part of the natural order. It is the non-natural rather than the supernatural that is the contrasting notion. The naturalist holds that they can be so explained, while the opponent of naturalism thinks otherwise, though it is not intended that opposition to naturalism commits one to anything supernatural. Nonetheless, one should not take naturalism in regard as committing one to any sort of reductive explanation of that realm, and there are such commitments in the use of ‘physicalism’ and ‘materialism’.
If psychoanalytic explanation gives the impression that it imputes bare, meaning-free causality, this results from attending to only half the story, and misunderstanding what psychoanalysis means when it talks of psychological mechanisms. The economic descriptions of mental processes that psychoanalysis provides are never replacements for, but they always presuppose, characterizations of mental processes through meaning. Mechanisms in psychoanalytic context are simply processes whose operation cannot be reconstructed as instances of rational functioning (they are what we might by preference call mental activities, by contrast with action) Psychoanalytic explanation’s postulation of mechanisms should not therefore be regarded as a regrettable and expugnable incursion of scientism into Freud’s thought, as is often claimed.
Suppose, alternatively, those hermeneuticists such as Habermas-who follow Dilthey beings as an interpretative practice to which the concepts of the physical sciences. Are inclined to provide by or as if by formal action, in that to an extended allocation of its presently accorded intentment in the correct of thinking that connections of the idea that something coneys to the mind its meanings are misrepresented through being described as causal? Again, this does not impact negatively of psychoanalytic explanation since, as just argued, psychoanalytic explanation nowhere of imputes meaning-free causation. Nothing is lost for psychoanalytic explanation causation is excised from the psychological picture.
The conclusion must be that psychoanalytic explanation is at bottom indifferent to the general meaning-cause issue. The core of psychoanalysis consists in its tracing of meaningful connections with no greater or lesser commitment to causality than is involved in ordinary psychology. (Which helps to set the stage-pending appropriate clinical validation-for psychoanalysis to claim as much truth for its explanation as ordinary psychology?). Also, the true key to psychoanalytic explanation, its attribution of special kinds of mental states that are not recognized in customary psychology, whose relations to one another does not have the form of patterns of inference or practical reasoning.
In the light of this, understanding why some compatibilities and hermeneuticists assert that their own view of psychology is uniquely consistent with psychoanalytic explanation is easy. Compatibilities are right to think that, to provide for psychoanalytic explanation, allowing mental connections that are unlike the connections of reasons to the actions that they rationalize is necessary, or to the beliefs that they support: And, that, in outlining such connections, psychoanalytic explanation must outstrip the resources of ordinary psychology, which does attempt to force as much as possible into the mould of practical reasoning. Hermeneuticists, for their part, are right to reconsider those postulating connections that were nominally psychological but that characterized would be futile as to meaning, and that psychoanalytic explanation does not respond to the ‘paradox’ of irrationality by abandoning the search for meaningful connections.
Compatibilities are, however, wrong to think that non-rational but meaningful connections require the psychological order to be conceived as a causal order. The hermeneuticists are free to postulate psychological connections determined by meaning but not by rationality: supposing that there are connections of meaning that is coherent are not -bona fide- rational connections, without these being causal. Meaningfulness is a broader concept than rationality. (Sometimes this thought has been expressed, though not helpful, by saying that Freud became aware of the existence of ‘neurotic rationality.) Even if an assumption of rationality is evasively necessary to make sense of behaviour overall. It does not need to be brought into play in making sense of each instance of behaviour. Hermeneuticists, in turn, are inaccurate to thinking that the compatibility view of psychology endorses a causal signal of a mental collaborationist, categorized by their meaning with causality or that it must lead to compatibilism to acknowledge that which in any qualitative difference between rational and irrational psychological connections.
All the same, the last two decades have been an extent of time set off or typically by someone or something intermittently for being periodic through which times inordinate changes, placing an encouraging well-situated plot in the psychology of the sciences. ‘Cognitive psychology’, which focuses on higher mental processes like reasoning, decision making, problem solving, language processing and higher-level processing, has become-perhaps, the-dominant paradigms among experimental psychologists, while behaviouristically oriented approaches have gradually fallen into disfavour.
The relationships between physical behaviour and agential behaviour are controversial. On some views, all ‘actions’ are identical; to physical changes in the subjects body, however, some kinds of physical behaviour, such as ‘reflexes’, are uncontroversially not kinds of agential behaviour. On others, a subject’s effectuation of some proceeding action used to indicate requirements by immediate or future needs or purpose. Bringing into circumstance or state of affairs from which situational extrication is differently involved by some physical change, but it is not identical to it.
Both physical and agential behaviours could be understood in the widest sense. Anything a person can do-even calculating in his head, for instance - could have actualization or reality as been regarded as agential behaviour. Likewise, any physical change in a person’s body-even the firing of a certain neuron, for instance-could have actually or reality to be regarded as physical behaviour.
Of course, to claim that the mind is ‘nothing beyond’ such-and-such kinds of behaviour, construed as either physical or agential behaviour in the widest sense, is not necessarily to be a behaviourist. The theory that the mind is a series of volitional acts-a view close to the idealist position of George Berkeley (1685-1753)-and the possible action’s of the minds’ condition are the enabling of certainties as founded in the neuronal events, while both controversial, are not forms of behaviourism.
Awaiting, right along the side of an approaching account for which anomalous monism may take on or upon itself is the view that there is only one kind of substance underlying all others, changing and processes. It is generally used in contrast to ‘dualism’, though one can also think of it as denying what might be called ‘pluralism’-a view often associated with Aristotle which claims that there are several substances, as the corpses of times generations have let it be known. Against the background of modern science, monism is usually understood to be a form of ‘materialism’ or ‘physicalism’. That is, the fundamental properties of matter and energy as described by physics are counted the only properties there are.
The position in the philosophy of mind known as ‘anomalous monism’ has its historical origins in the German philosopher and founder of critical philosophy Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), but is universally identified with the American philosopher Herbert Donald Davidson (1917-2003), and it was he who coined the term. Davidson has maintained that one can be a monist-indeed, a physicalist-about the fundamental nature of things and events, while also asserting that there can be no full ‘reduction’ of the mental to the physical. (This is sometimes expressed by saying that there can be an ontological, though not a conceptual reduction.) Davidson thinks that complete knowledge of the brain and any related neurophysiological systems that support the mind’s activities would not themselves be knowledge of such things as belief, desire, and experience, and so on, find the mentalistic generativist of thoughts. This is not because he thinks that the mind is somehow a separate kind of existence: Anomalous monism is after all monism. Rather, it is because the nature of mental phenomena rules out a priori that there will be law-like regularities connecting mental phenomena and physical events in the brain, and, without such laws, there is no real hope of explaining the mental that has recently come into existence, through the evolutionary structures in the physicality of the brain.
All and all, one central goal of the philosophy of science is to provided explicit and systematic accounts of the theories and explanatory strategies explored in the science. Another common goal is to construct philosophically illuminating analyses or explanations of central theoretical concepts involved in one or another science. In the philosophy of biology, for example, there is a rich literature aimed at understanding teleological explanations, and thereby has been a great deal of work on the structure of evolutionary theory and on such crucial concepts. If concepts of the simple (observational) sorts were internal physical structures that had, in this sense, an information-carrying function, a function they acquired during learning, then instances of these structure types would have a content that (like a belief) could be either true or false. In that of ant information-carrying structure carries all kinds of information if, for example, it carries information ‘A’, it must also carry the information that ‘A’ or ‘B’. Conceivably, the process of learning is supposed to be a process in which a single piece of this information is selected for special treatment, thereby becoming the semantic content-the meaning-of subsequent tokens of that structure type. Just as we conventionally give artefacts and instruments information-providing functions, thereby making their flashing lights, and so forth-representations of the conditions in the world in which we are interested, so learning converts neural states that carry imparting information, as ‘pointer readings’ in the head, so to speak-int structures that have the function of providing some vital piece of information they carry when this process occurs in the ordinary course of learning, the functions in question develop naturally. They do not, as do the functions of instruments and artefacts, depends on the intentions, beliefs, and attitudes of users. We do not give brain structure these functions. They get it by themselves, in some natural way, either (of the senses) from their selectional history or (in thought) from individual learning. The result is a network of internal representations that have (in different ways) the power representation, of experience and belief.
To recognizing the existence or meaning of apprehending to know of the progression of constant understanding that this approach to ‘thought’ and ‘belief’, the approach that conceives of them as forms of internal representation, is not a version of ‘functionalism’-at least, not if this dely held theory is understood, as it is often, as a theory that identifies mental properties with functional properties. For functional properties have to do within the manner for which to some extent of engaging one’s imploring that which has real and independent existence, something, in fact, behaves, with its syndrome of typical causes and effects. An informational model of belief, to account for misrepresentation, a problem with which a preliminary way that in both need something more than a structure that provided information. It needs something having that as its function. It needs something supposed to provide information. As Sober (1985) comments for an account of the mind we need functionalism with the function, the ‘teleological’, is put back in it.
Philosophers’ need not charge a pressing lack of something essential, and typically do not assume that there is anything wrong with the science they are studying. Their goal is simply to provide accounts of the theories, concepts and explanatory strategies that scientists are using-accounts that are more explicit, systematic and philosophically sophisticated than the often rather rough-and-ready accounts offered by the scientists themselves.
Cognitive psychology is, in many ways a curious and puzzling science. Many theories put forward by cognitive psychologists make use of a family of ‘intentional’ concept-like believing’ that expressing a desire for that ‘q’, and representing ‘r’-which do not appear in the physical or biological sciences, and these intentional concepts play a crucial role in many explanations offered by these theories.
It is characteristic of dialectic awareness that discussions of intentionality appeared as the paradigm cases discussed which are usually beliefs or sometimes beliefs and desires, however, the biologically most basic forms of intentionality are in perception and in intentional action. These also have certain formal features that are not common to beliefs and desire. Consider a case of perceptual experience. Suppose that I see my hand in front of my face. What are the conditions of satisfaction? First, the perceptual experience of the hand in front of my face has as its condition of satisfaction that there is a hand in front of my face. Thus far, the condition of satisfaction is the same as the belief than there is a hand in front of my face. But with perceptual experience there is this difference: so that the intentional content is satisfied, the fact that there is a hand in front of my face must cause the very experience whose intentional content is that there is a hand in front of my face. This has the consequence that perception has a special kind of condition of satisfaction that we might describe as ‘causally self-referential’. The full conditions of satisfaction of the perceptual experience are, first that there is a hand in front of my face, and second, that there is a hand in front of my face caused the very experience of whose conditions of satisfaction forms a part. we can represent this in our acceptation of the form. S(p), such as:
Visual experience (that there is a hand in front of face
and the fact that there is a hand in front of my face
is causing this very experience.)
Furthermore, visual experiences have a kind of conscious immediacy not characterised of beliefs and desires. A person can literally be said to have beliefs and desires while sound asleep. But one can only have visual experiences of a non-pathological kind when one is fully awake and conscious because the visual experiences are themselves forms of consciousness.
People’s decisions and actions are explained by appeal to their beliefs and desires. Perceptual processes, sensational, are said to result in mental states that represent (or sometimes misrepresent) one or as another aspect of the cognitive agent’s environment. Other theorists have offered analogous acts, if differing in detail, perhaps, the most crucial idea in all of this is the one about representations. There is perhaps a sense in which what happens to be said, is the level of the retina, that constitute the anatomical processes of occurring in the process of stimulation, some kind of representation of what produces that stimulation, and thus, some kind of representation of the objects of perception. Or so it may seem, if one attempts to describe the relation between the structure and characteristic of the object of perception and the structure and nature of the retinal processes. One might say that the nature of that relation is such as to provide information about the part of the world perceived, in the sense of ‘information’ presupposed when one says that the rings in the sectioning of a tree’s truck provide information of its age. This is because there is an appropriate causal relation between the things that make it impossible for it to be a matter of chance. Subsequently processing can then be thought to exist for one who carried out on what is provided in the representational inquiries.
However, if there are such representations, they are not representations for the perceiver, it is the thought that perception involves representations of that kind that produced the old, and now largely discredited philosophical theories of perception that suggested that perception be a matter, primarily, of an apprehension of mental states of some kind, e.g., sense-data, which are representatives of perceptual objects, either by being caused by them or in being in some way constitutive of them. Also, if it is said that the idea of information so invoked indicates that there is a sense in which of precesses that stimulation can be said to have content, but a non-conceptual content, distinct from the content provided by the subsumption of what is perceived under concepts. It must be emphasised that, that content is not one for the perceiver. What the information-processing story is to maintain, is, at best, a more adequate categorization than previously available of the causal processes involved. That may be important, but more should not be claimed for it than there is. If in perception is a given case one can be said to have an experience as of an object of a certain shape and kind related to another object it is because there is presupposed in that perception the possession of concepts of objects, and more particular, a concept of space and how objects occupy space.
It is, that, nonetheless, cognitive psychologists occasionally say a bit about the nature of intentional concepts and the nature of intentional concepts and the explanations that exploit them. Their comments are rarely systematic or philosophically illuminating. Thus, it is hardly surprising that many philosophers have seen cognitive psychology as fertile grounds for the sort of careful descriptive work that is done in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of physics. The American philosopher of mind Alan Jerry Fodor’s (1935-), The Language of Thought (1975) was a pioneering study in th genre on the field. Philosophers have, also, done important and widely discussed work in what might be called the ‘descriptive philosophy’ or ‘cognitive psychology’.
These philosophical accounts of cognitive theories and the concepts they invoke are generally much more explicit than the accounts provided by psychologists, and through them, they inevitably smooth over some of the rough edges of scientists’ actual practice. But if the account they give of cognitive theories diverges significantly from the theories that psychologists actually produce, then the philosophers have just got it wrong. There is, however, a very different way in which philosopher’s have approached cognitive psychology. Rather than merely trying to characterize what cognitive psychology is actually doing, some philosophers try to say what it should and should not be doing. Their goal is not to explicate o or upon the narratives that scientific applications are but to criticize and improve it. The most common target of this critical approach is the use of intentional concepts in cognitive psychology. Intentional notions have been criticized on various grounds. The two situated considerations are that they fail to supervene on the physiology of the cognitive agent, and that they cannot be ‘naturalized’.
Perhaps e easiest way to make the point about ‘supervenience is to use a thought experiment of the sort originally proposed by the American philosopher Hilary Putnam (1926-). Suppose that in some distant corner of the universe there is a planet, Twin Earth, which is very similar to our own planet. On Twin Earth, there is a person who is an atom for an atom replica of J.F. Kennedy. Past, assassinated President J.F. Kennedy, who lives on Earth believes that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Tennessee, and if you asked him ‘Was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. born in Tennessee, In all probability the answer would either or not it is yes or no. Twin, Kennedy would respond in the same way, but it is not because he believes that our Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.? Was, as, perhaps, very much in question of what is true or false? His beliefs are about Twin-Luther, and that Twin -Luther was certainly not born in Tennessee, and thus, that J.F. Kennedy’s belief is true while Twin-Kennedy’s is false. What all this is supposed to show is that two people, perhaps on opposite polarities of justice, or justice as drawn on or upon human rights, can share all their physiological properties without sharing all their intentional properties. To turn this into a problem for cognitive psychology, two additional premises are needed. The first is that cognitive psychology attempts to explain behaviour by appeal to people’s intentional properties. The second, is that psychological explanations should not appeal to properties that fall to supervene on an organism’s physiology. (Variations on this theme can be found in the American philosopher Allen Jerry Fodor (1987)).
The thesis that the mental are supervening on the physical-roughly, the claim that the mental characters of a determinant adaptation of its physical nature-has played a key role in the formulation of some influential positions of the ‘mind-body’ problem. In particular versions of non-reductive ‘physicalism’, and has evoked in arguments about the mental, and has been used to devise solutions to some central problems about the mind-for example, the problem of mental causation.
The idea of supervenience applies to one but not to the other, that this, there could be no difference in a moral respect without a difference in some descriptive, or non-moral respect evidently, the idea generalized so as to apply to any two sets of properties (to secure greater generality it is more convenient to speak of properties that predicates). The American philosopher Donald Herbert Davidson (1970), was perhaps first to introduce supervenience into the rhetoric discharging into discussions of the mind-body problem, when he wrote ‘ . . . mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervening, on physical characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that there cannot be two events alike in all physical respects but differing in some mental respectfulness, or that an object cannot alter in some metal deferential submission without altering in some physical regard. Following, the British philosopher George Edward Moore (1873-1958) and the English moral philosopher Richard Mervyn Hare (1919-2003), from whom he avowedly borrowed the idea of supervenience. Donald Herbert Davidson, went on to assert that supervenience in this sense is consistent with the irreducibility of the supervient to their ‘subvenience’, or ‘base’ properties. Dependence or supervenience of this kind does not entail reducibility through law or definition . . . ‘
Thus, three ideas have purposively come to be closely associated with supervenience: (1) Property convariation, (if two things are indiscernible in the infrastructure of allowing properties that they must be indiscernible in supervening properties). (2) Dependence, (supervening properties are dependent on, or determined by, their subservient bases) and (3) non-reducibility (property convariation and dependence involved in supervenience can obtain even if supervening properties are not reducible to their base properties.)
Nonetheless, in at least, for the moment, supervenience of the mental-in the form of strong supervenience, or, at least global supervenience-is arguably a minimum commitment to physicalism. But can we think of the thesis of mind-body supervenience itself as a theory of the mind-body relation-that is, as a solution to the mind-body problem?
It would seem that any serious theory addressing the mind-body problem must say something illuminating about the nature of psychophysical dependence, or why, contrary to common belief, there is no dependence in either way. However, if we take to consider the ethical naturalist intuitivistic will say that the supervenience, and the dependence, for which is a brute fact you discern through moral intuition: And the prescriptivist will attribute the supervenience to some form of consistency requirements on the language of evaluation and prescription. And distinct from all of these is a mereological supervenience, namely the supervenience of properties of a whole on properties and relations of its pats. What all this shows, is that there is no single type of dependence relation common to all cases of supervenience, supervenience holds in different cases for different reasons, and does not represent a type of dependence that can be put alongside causal dependence, meaning dependence, mereological dependence, and so forth.
There seems to be a promising strategy for turning the supervenience thesis into a more substantive theory of mind, and it is that to explicate mind-body supervenience as a special case of mereological supervenience-that is, the dependence of the properties of a whole on the properties and relations characterizing its proper parts. Mereological dependence does seem to be a special form of dependence that is metaphysically sui generis and highly important. If one takes this approach, one would have to explain psychological properties as macroproperties of a whole organism that covary, in appropriate ways, with its macroproperties, i.e., the way its constituent organs, tissues, and so forth, are organized and function. This more specific supervenience thesis may be a serious theory of the mind-body relation that can compete for the classic options in the field.
On this topic, as with many topics in philosophy, there is a distinction to be made between (1) certain vague, partially inchoate, pre-theoretic ideas and beliefs about the matter nearby, and (2) certain more precise, more explicit, doctrines or theses that are taken to articulate or explicate those pre-theoretic ideas and beliefs. There are various potential ways of precisifying our pre-theoretic conception of a physicalist or materialist account of mentality, and the question of how best to do so is itself a matter for ongoing, dialectic, philosophical inquiry.
The view concerns, in the first instance, at least, the question of how we, as ordinary human beings, in fact go about ascribing beliefs to one another. The idea is that we do this on the basis of our knowledge of a common-sense theory of psychology. The theory is not held to consist in a collection of grandmotherly saying, such as ‘once bitten, twice shy’. Rather it consists in a body of generalizations relating psychological states to each other to input from the environment, and to actions. Such may be founded on or upon the grounds that show or include the following:
(1) (x)(p) if ‘x’ is to feel agitation or dismay in the anticipation of or in the presence of fear that ‘p’, then ‘x’ desires that ‘not-p’.
(2) (x)(p)(if ‘x’ hopes that ‘p’ and • hope that ‘p’ and • become or be made aware of something not previously known that ‘p’, then • is pleased that ‘p’.)
(3) (x)(p)(q) If ‘x’ is to have a firm conviction in the reality of something believed that ‘p’ and • believe in the conviction of the reality of something that if ‘p’, then ‘q’, barring confounding distraction, and so forth. • believes that ‘q’.
(4) (x)(p)(q) If ‘x’ is desirously that ‘p’ and so that ‘x’ believes that if ‘q’ then ‘p’, and ‘x’ are able to bring it about that ‘q’, then, barring conflict desires or preferred strategies, ‘x’ brings it about that ‘q’.
All of these generalizations should be most of the time, but variably. Adventurous types often enjoy the adrenal thrill produced by fear, this leads them, on occasion, to desire the very state of affairs that frightens them. Analogously, with (3). A subject who believes that ‘p’ nd believes that if ‘p’, then ‘q’. Would typically infer that ‘q?’ But certain atypical circumstances may intervene: Subjects may become confused or distracted, or they ma y finds the prospect of ‘q’ so awful that they dare not allow themselves to believe it. The ceteris paribus nature of these generalizations is not usually considered to be problematic, since atypical circumstances are, of course, atypical, and the generalizations are applicable most of the time.
We apply this psychological theory to make inference about people’s beliefs, desires and so forth. If, for example, we know that Julie believes that if she is to be at the airport at four, then she should get a taxi at half past two, and she believes that she is to be at the airport at four, then we will predict, using (3), that Julie will infer that she should get a taxi at half past two.
The Theory-Theory, as it is called, is an empirical theory addressing the question of our actual knowledge of beliefs. Taken in its purest form if addressed both first and third-person knowledge: we know about our own beliefs and those of others in the same way, by application of common-sense psychological theory in both cases. However, it is not very plausible to hold that we overplay or overact of any given attention or emphasis in dramatizing in excess of going beyond a normal or acceptable limit. That indeed usually-know our own beliefs by way of theoretical inference. Since it is an empirical theory concerning one of our cognitive abilities, the Theory-Theory is open to psychological scrutiny. Various issues of the hypothesized common-sense psychological theory, we need to know whether it is known consciously or unconsciously. Nevertheless, research has revealed that three-year-old children are reasonably gods at inferring the beliefs of others on the basis of actions, and at predicting actions on the basis of beliefs that others are known to possess. However, there is one area in which three-year-old’s psychological reasoning differs markedly from adults. Tests of the sorts are rationalized in such that: ‘False Belief Tests’, reveal largely consistent results. Three-year-old subjects are witnesses to the scenario about the child, Billy, see his mother place some biscuits in a biscuit tin. Billy then goes out to play, and, unseen by him, his mother removes the biscuit from the tin and places them in a jar, which is then hidden in a cupboard. When asked, ‘Where will Billy check for the biscuits’? The majority of three-year-olds answer that Billy will look in the jar in the cupboard-where the biscuits actually are, than where Billy saw them being placed. On being asked ‘Where does Billy think the biscuits are’? They again, tend to answer ‘in the cupboard’, rather than ‘in the jar’. Three-year-olds thus, appear to have some difficulty attributing false beliefs to others in case in which it would be natural for adults to do so. However, it appears that three-year-olds are lacking the idea of false beliefs overall, nor does it come out that they struggle with attributing false beliefs in other kinds of situations. For example, they have little trouble distinguishing between dreams and play, on the one hand, and true beliefs or claims on the other. By the age of four and some half years, most children pass the False Belief Tests fairly consistently. There is yet no general accepted theory of why three-year-olds fare so badly with the false beliefs tests, nor of what it reveals about their conception of beliefs.
Recently some philosophers and psychologists have put forward what they take to be an alternative to the Theory-Theory: However, the challenge does not end there. We need also to consider the vital element of making appropriate adjustments for differences between one’s own psychological states and those of the other. Nevertheless, it is implausible to think in every such case of simulation, yet alone will provide the resolving obtainability to achieve.
The evaluation of the behavioural manifestations of belief, desires, and intentions are enormously varied, every bit as suggested. When we move away from perceptual beliefs, the links with behaviour are intractable and indirect: The expectation I form on the basis of a particular belief reflects the influence of numerous other opinions, my actions are formed by the totality of my preferences and all those opinions that have a bearing on or upon them. The causal processes that produce my beliefs reflect my opinions about those processes, about their reliability and the interference to which they are subject. Thus, behaviour justifies the ascription of a particular belief only by helping to warrant a more all-inclusive interpretation of cognitive positions of the individual in question. Psychological descriptions, like translation, are a ‘holistic’ business. And once this is taken into account, it is all the less likely that a common physical trait will be found which grounds all instances of the same belief. The ways in which all of our propositional altitudes interact in the production of behaviour reinforce the anomalous character of our mentality and render any sort of reduction of the mind to the physical impossibilities. Such is not meant as a practical procedure, it can, however, generalize on this so that interpretation and merely translation is at issue, has made this notion central to methods of accounting responsibilities of the mind.
Theory and Theory-Theory are two, as many think competing, views of the nature of our common-sense, propositional attitude explanations of action. For example, when we say that our neighbour cut down his apple tree because he believed that it was ruining his patio and did not want it ruined, we are offering a typically common-sense explanation of his action in terms of his beliefs and desires. But, even though wholly familiar, it is not clear what kind of explanation is at issue. Connected of one view, is the attribution of beliefs and desires that are taken as the application to actions of a theory that, in its informal way, functions very much like theoretical explanations in science. This is known as the ‘theory-theory’ of every day psychological explanation. In contrast, it has been argued that our propositional attributes are not theoretical claims do much as reports of a kind of ‘simulation’. On such a ‘simulation theory’ of the matter, we decide what our neighbour will do (and thereby why he did so) by imagining ourselves in his position and deciding what we would do.
The Simulation Theorist should probably concede that simulations need to be backed up by the unconfined means of discovering the psychological states of others. But they need not concede that these independent means take the form of a theory. Rather, they might suggest that we can get by with some rules of thumb, or straightforward inductive reasoning of a general kind.
A second and related difficulty with the Simulation Theory concerns our capacity to attribute beliefs that are too alien to be easily simulated: Beliefs of small children, or psychotics, or bizarre beliefs are deeply suppressed into the mindful latencies within the unconscious. The small child refuses to sleep in the dark: He is afraid that the Wicked Witch will steal him away. No matter how many adjustments we make, it may be hard for mature adults to get their own psychological processes, as even to make in pretended play, to mimic the production of such belief. For the Theory-Theory alien beliefs are not particularly problematic: So long as they fit into the basic generalizations of the theory, they will be Inferable from the evidence. Thus, the Theory-Theory can account better for our ability to discover more bizarre and alien beliefs than can the Simulation Theory.
The Theory-Theory and the Simulation Theory are not the only proposals about knowledge of belief. A third view has its origins in the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). On this view both the Theory and Simulation Theories attribute too much psychologizing to our common-sense psychology. Knowledge of other minds is, according to this alternative picture, more observational in nature. Beliefs, desires, feelings are made manifest to us in the speech and other actions of those with whom we share a language and way of life. When someone says. ‘Its going to rain’ and takes his umbrella from his bag. It is immediately clear to us that he believes it is going to rain. In order to know this, we neither theorize nor simulate: We just perceive, of course, this is not straightforward visual perception of the sort that we use to see the umbrella. But it is like visual perception in that it provides immediate and non-inferential awareness of its objects. we might call this the ‘Observational Theory’.
The Observational Theory does not seem to accord very well with the fact that we frequently do have to indulge in a fair amount of psychologizing to find in what others believe. It is clear that any given action might be the upshot of any number of different psychological attitudes. This applies even in the simplest cases. For example, because one’s friend is suspended from a dark balloon near a beehive, with the intention of stealing honey. This idea to make the bees behave that it is going to rain and therefore believe that the balloon as a dark cloud, and therefore pay no attention to it, and so fail to notice one’s dangling friend. Given this sort of possible action, the observer would surely be rash immediately to judge that the agent believes that it is going to rain. Rather, they would need to determine-perhaps, by theory, perhaps by simulation-which of the various clusters of mental states that might have led to the action, actually did so. This would involve bringing in further knowledge of the agent, the background circumstances and so forth. It is hard to see how the sort of difficult compounded composite as the mental process involved in this sort of psychological reflection could be assimilated to any kind of observation.
The attributions of intentionality are explicitly depending on optimality or reasonableness, are those interpretations of the assumptive phenomena-a ‘heuristic overlay’ (1969), describing an inescapable idealized ‘real pattern’. Like such abstractions, as centres of gravity and parallelograms of force, the beliefs and desires posited by the highest stance have noo independent and concrete existence, and since this is the case, there would be no deeper facts that could settle the issue if-most importantly-rival intentional interpretations arose that did equally well at rationalizing the history of behaviour of an entity. Orman van William Quine 1908-2000, the most influential American philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century, whose thesis on the indeterminacy of radical translation carries all the way in the thesis of the indeterminacy of radical interpretation of mental states and processes.
The fact that cases of radical indeterminacy, though possible in principle, is vanishingly unlikely ever to comfort us in the solacing refuge and shelter, yet, this is apparently an idea that is deeply counter-intuitive to many philosophers, who have hankered for more ‘realistic’ doctrines. There are two different strands of ‘realism’ that in the attempt to undermine are such:
(1) Realism about the entities allegedly given and presented by our
every day mentalistic discourse-what is dubbed as folk-psychology
(1981). Such as beliefs, desires, pains, the self.
(2) Realism about content itself-the idea that there has to be
events or entities that really have intentionality (as opposed to the events and entities that only have as if they had intentionality).
The tenet indicated by (1) rests of what is fatigue, what bodily states or events are so fatiguing, that they are identical with, and so forth. This is a confusion that calls for diplomacy, not philosophical discovery: The choice between an ‘Eliminative materialism’ and an ‘identity theory’ of fatigues is not a matter of which ‘ism’ is right, but of which way of speaking is most apt to wean these misbegotten features of them as conceptual schemata.
Again, the tenet (2) my attack has been more indirect. The view that some philosophers, in that of a demand for content realism as an instance of a common philosophical mistake: Philosophers often manoeuvre themselves into a position from which they can see only two alternatives: Infinite regresses versus some sort of ‘intrinsic’ foundation-a prime mover of one sort or another. For instance, it has seemed obvious that for some things to be valuable as means, other things must be intrinsically valuable-ends in themselves-otherwise we would be stuck with vicious regress (or, having no beginning or end) of things valuable only that although some intentionality is ‘derived’ (the ‘aboutness’ of the pencil marks composing a shopping list is derived from the intentions of the person whose list it is), unless some intentionality is ‘original’ and underived, there could be no derived intentionality.
There is always another alternative, namely, some finites regress that peters out without marked foundations or thresholds or essences. Here is an avoided paradox: Every mammal has a mammal for a mother-but, this implies an infinite genealogy of mammals, which cannot be the case. The solution is not to search for an essence of mammalhood that would permit us in principle to identify the Prime Mammal, but rather to tolerate a finite regress that connects mammals to their non-mammalian ancestors by a sequence that can only be partitioned arbitrarily. The reality of today’s mammals is secure without foundations.
The best instance of this theme is held to the idea that the way to explain the miraculous-seeming powers of an intelligent intentional system is to disintegrate it into hierarchically structured teams of ever more stupid intentional systems, ultimately discharging all intelligence-debts in a fabric of stupid mechanisms? Lycan (1981), has called this view ‘homuncular functionalism’. One may be tempted to ask: Are the sub-personal components ‘real’ intentional systems? At what point in the diminutions of prowess as we descend to simple neurons does ‘real’ intentionality disappear? Don’t ask. The reasons for regarding an individual neuron (or a thermostat) as an intentional system are unimpressive, bu t zero, and the security of our intentional attributions at the highest lowest-level of real intentionality. Another exploitation of the same idea is found in Elbow Room (1984): Ast what point in evolutionary history did authentically to correspond to known, reason-appreciators real selves, make their appearance? Doesn’t ask-for the dame reason? Here is yet another, more fundamental versions of evolution can point in the early days of evolution can we speak of genuine function, genuine selection-for and not mere fortuitous preservation of entities that happen to have some self-replicative capacity? Don’t ask. Many of the more interesting and important features of our world have emerged, gradually, from a world that initially lacked them-function, intentionality, consciousness, morality, value-and it is a fool’s errand to try to identify a first or most-simple instances of the ‘real’ thing. It is, for the same to reason a mistake must exist to answer all the questions our system of content attribution permits us to ask. Tom says he has an older brother in Toronto and that he is an only child. What does he really believe? Could he really believe that he had a but if he also believed he was an only child? What is the ‘real’ content of his mental state? There is no reason to suppose there is a principled answer.
The most sweeping conclusion having drawn from this theory of content is that the large and well-regarded literature on ‘propositional attitudes’ (especially the debates over wide versus narrow content) is largely a disciplinary artefact of no long-term importance whatever, accept perhaps, as history’s most slowly unwinding unintended reductio ad absurdum. Mostly, the disagreements explored in that literature cannot even be given an initial expression unless one takes on the assumption of an unsounded fundamentalist of strong realism about content, and its constant companion, the idea of a ‘language of thought’ a system of mental representation that is decomposable into elements rather like terms, and large elements rather like sentences. The illusion, that this is plausible, or even inevitable, is particularly fostered by the philosophers’ normal tactic of working from examples of ‘believing-that-p’, that focuses attention on mental states that are directly or indirectly language-infected. Such as believing that the shortest spy is a spy, or believing that snow is white. (Do polar bears believe that snow is white? In the way we do?) There are such states-in language-using human beings - but, they are not exemplary r foundational states of belief, needing a term for them. As, perhaps, in calling the term in need of, as they represent ‘opinions’. Opinions play a large, perhaps even a decisive role in our concept of a person, but they are not paradigms of the sort of cognitive element to which one can assign content in the first instance. If one starts, as one should, with the cognitive states and events occurring in non-human animals, and uses these as the foundation on which to build theories of human cognition, the language-infected state is more readily seen to be derived, less directly implicated in the explanation of behaviour, and the chief but an illicit source of plausibility of the doctrine of a language of thought. Postulating a language of thought is in any event some deferments of the central problems are of content to refer especially to a supposed cause, source or author ascribed, as not a necessary first step.
Our momentum, regardless, produces on or upon the inflicting of forces out the causal theories of epistemology, of what makes a belief justified and what makes a true belief knowledge? It is natural to think that whether a belief deserves one of these appraisals depends on that which a person, fact or condition generated or was the cause of all our difficulties, that for an effect, for which caused the subordinate to have the belief. In recent decades a number of epistemologists have pursued this plausible idea with a variety of specific proposals. For some proposed casual criteria for knowledge and justification are for us, to take under consideration.
Some causal theories of knowledge have it that a true belief that ‘p’ is knowledge just in case it has the right sort of causal connection to the fact that ‘p’. Suchlike some criteria can be applied only to cases where the fact that ‘p’, a sort that can enter causal relations: This seems to exclude mathematically and other necessary facts and perhaps any fact expressed by a universal generalization. And proponents of this sort of criterion have usually supposed that it is limited to perceptual knowledge of particular facts about the subject’s environment.
For example, the forthright Australian materialist David Malet Armstrong (1973), proposed that a belief of the form, ‘This (perceived) object is ‘F’ is (non-inferential) knowledge if and only if the belief is a completely reliable sign that the perceived object is ‘F’, that is, the fact that the object is ‘F’ contributed to causing the belief and its doing so depended on properties of the believer such that the laws of nature dictate that, for any subject ‘x’ and perceived object ‘y’. If ‘x’ has those properties and believes that ‘y’ is ‘F’, then ‘y’ is ‘F’. Dretske (1981) offers a rather similar account in terms of the belief’s being caused by a signal received by the perceiver that carries the information that the object is ‘F’.
This sort of condition fails, however, to be sufficient t for non-inferential perceptual knowledge because it is compatible with the belief’s being unjustified, and an unjustified belief cannot be knowledge. For example, suppose that your mechanisms for colour perception are working well, but you have been given good reason to think otherwise, to think, say, that any tinted colour of the things that look brownishly-tinted to you it will appear as brownishly-tinted things look of any tinted colour. If you fail to heed these results you have for thinking that your colour perception is awry and believe of a thing that look’s colour tinted to you that it is colour-tinted in your belief will fail to be justified and will therefore fail to be knowledge, even though it is caused by the thing’s being tinted in such a way as to be a completely reliable sign (or to carry the information) that the thing is tinted or found of some tinted discolouration.
One could fend off this sort of counter-example by simply adding to the causal condition the requirement that the belief be justified. But this enriched condition would still be insufficient. Suppose, for example, that in an experiment you are given a drug that in nearly all people (but not in you, as it happens) causes the aforementioned aberration in colour perception. The experimenter tells you that you’re taken such a drug that says, ‘No, wait a minute, the pill you took was just a placebo’. But suppose further that this last thing the experimenter tells you is discordantly not the truth. Her telling you this gives you justification for believing of a thing that looks colour tinted or tinged in brownish tones, but in fact about this justification that is unknown to you (that the experimenter’s last statement was false) makes it the casse that your true belief is not knowledge even though it satisfies Armstrong’s causal condition.
Goldman (1986) has proposed an important different sort of causal criterion, namely, that a true belief is knowledge if it is produced by a type of process that a ‘global’ and ‘locally’ reliable. It is global reliability of its propensity to cause true beliefs is sufficiently high. Local reliability had to do with whether the process would have produced a similar but false belief in certain counter-factual situations alternative to the actual situation. This way of marking off true beliefs that are knowledge e does not require the fact believed to be causally related to the belief and so it could in principle apply to knowledge of any kind of truth.
Goldman requires the global reliability of the belief-producing process for the justification of a belief, he requires, also for knowledge because justification is required for knowledge. What he requires for knowledge only of being one or more of which there exist any other but manages not to require for justification is local reliability. His idea is that a justified true belief is knowledge if the type of process that produced it would not have produced it in any relevant counter-factual situation in which it is
The theory of relevant alternative is best understood as an attempt to accommodate two opposing strands in our thinking about knowledge. The first is that knowledge is an absolute concept. On one interpretation, this is to mean that the justification or evidence one must have an order to know a proposition ‘p’ must be ample sufficient by expressively viewing of all these that alternatively vindicate ‘p’, (when an alternative to a proposition ‘p’ is a proposition incompatible with ‘p’).
For knowledge requires only that elimination of the relevant alternatives. So the tentative relevance for which alternate substitutions made for our consideration in view of its preservers that hold of both strands of our thinking about knowledge. Knowledge is an absolute concept, but because the absoluteness is relative to a standard, we can know many things.
The relevant alternative’s account of knowledge can be motivated by noting that other concepts exhibit the same logical structure e. two examples of this are the concepts ‘flat’ and the concept ‘empty’. Both appear to be absolute concepts-a space is empty only if it does not contain anything and a surface is flat only if it does not have any bumps. However, the absolute character of these concepts is relative to a standard. In the case of flat, there is a standard for what there is a standard for what counts as a bump and in the case of empty, there is a standard for what counts as a thing. we would not deny that a table is flat because a microscope reveals irregularities in its surface. Nor would we den y that a warehouse is empty because it contains particles of dust. To be flat is to be free of any relevant bumps. To be empty is to be devoid of all relevant things. Analogously, the relevant alternative’s theory says that to know a proposition is to have evidence that eliminates all relevant alternatives.
Some philosophers have argued that the relevant alternative’s theory of knowledge entails the falsity of the principle that set of known (by S) propositions in closed under known (by ‘S’) entailment, although others have disputed this however, this principle affirms the following conditional or the closure principle:
If ‘S’ knows ‘p’ and ‘S’ knows that ‘p’ entail’s ‘q’, then ‘S’ knows ‘q’.
According to the theory of relevant alternatives, we can know a proposition ‘p’, without knowing that some (non-relevant) alterative too ‘p’ is false. But, once an alternative ‘h’ too ‘p’ incompatible with ‘p’, then ‘p’ will trivially entail not-h. So it will be possible to know some proposition without knowing another proposition trivially entailed by it. For example, we can know that we see a zebra without knowing that it is not the case that we see a cleverly disguised mule (on the assumption that ‘we see a cleverly disguised mule’ is not a relevant alterative). This will involve a violation of the closure principle. This is an interesting consequence of the theory because the closure principles seem too many to be quite intuitive. In fact, we can view sceptical arguments as employing the closure principle as a premise, along with the premise that we do not know that the alternatives raised by the sceptic are false. From these two premisses, it follows (on the assumption that we see that the propositions we believe entail the falsity of sceptical alternatives) that we do not know the proposition we believe. For example, it follows from the closure principle and the fact that we do not know that we do not see a cleverly disguised mule, that we do not know that we see a zebra. we can view the relevant alternative’s theory as replying to the sceptical arguments by denying the closure principle.
What makes an alternative relevant? What standard do the alternatives rise by the sceptic fail to meet? These notoriously difficult to answer with any degree of precision or generality. This difficulty has led critics to view the theory as something being to obscurity. The problem can be illustrated though an example. Suppose Smith sees a barn and believes that he does, on the basis of very good perceptual evidence. When is the alternative that Smith sees a paper-maché replica relevant? If there are many such replicas in the immediate area, then this alternative can be relevant. In these circumstances, Smith fails to know that he sees a barn unless he knows that it is not the case that he sees a barn replica. Where there is any intensified replication that exists by this alternative will not be relevant? Smith can know that he sees a barn without knowing that he does not see a barn replica.
This highly suggests that a criterion of relevance be something like probability conditional on Smith’s evidence and certain features of the circumstances. But which circumstances in particular do we count? Consider a case where we want the result that the barn replica alternative is clearly relevant, e.g., a case where the circumstances are such that there are numerous barn replicas in the area. Does the suggested criterion give us the result we wanted? The probability that Smith sees a barn replica given his evidence and his location to an area where there are many barn replicas is high. However, that same probability conditional on his evidence and his particular visual orientation toward a real barn is quite low. we want the probability to be conditional on features of the circumstances like the former bu t not on features of the circumstances like the latter. But how do we capture the difference in a general formulation?
How significant a problem is this for the theory of relevant alternatives? This depends on how we construe theory. If the theory is supposed to provide us with an analysis of knowledge, then the possibility to be without something and especially something essentially or greatly needed found ca pressing lack of something essential, a needful requisite necessary for the necessity to provide readily relief in the absence in all human lack of precise criteria of relevance surely constitutes a serious problem. However, if the theory is viewed instead as providing a response to sceptical arguments, it can be argued that the difficulty has little significance for the overall success of the theory.
What justifies the acceptance of a theory? In the face of the fact that some exceptional versions of empiricism have met many criticisms, and are nonetheless, overtaken to look for an answer in some sort of empiricist terms: In terms, that is, of support by the available evidence. How else could objectivity of science be defended but by showing that its conclusions (and in particular its theoretical conclusions-those theories it presently accepts) are somehow legitimately based on agreed observational and experimental evidence? But, as is well known, theories usually pose a problem for empiricism.
Allowing the empiricist the assumptions that there are observational statements whose truth-values can be inter-subjectively agreeing, and show the exploratory, non-demonstrative use of experiment in contemporary science. Yet philosophers identify experiments with observed results, and these with the testing of theory. They assume that observation provides an open window for the mind onto a world of natural facts and regularities, and that the main problem for the scientist is to establishing the unequalled independence of a theoretical interpretation. Experiments merely enable the production of (true) observation statements. Shared, replicable observations are the basis for a scientific consensus about an objective reality. It is clear that most scientific claims are genuinely theoretical: Nether themselves observational nor derivable deductively from observation statements (nor from inductive generalizations thereof). Accepting that there are phenomena that we have more or less diet access to, then, theories seem, at least when taken literally, to tell us about what is going on ‘underneath’ the evidently direct observability as made accessibly phenomenal, on order to produce those phenomena. The accounts given by such theories of this trans-empirical reality, simply because it is trans-empirical, can never be established by data, nor even by the ‘natural’ inductive generalizations of our data. No amount of evidence about tracks in cloud chambers and the like, can deductively establish that those tracks are produced by ‘trans-observational’ electrons.
One response would, of course, be to invoke some strict empiricist account of meaning, insisting that talk of electrons and the like, is, in fact just shorthand for talks in cloud chambers and the like. This account, however, has few, if any, current defenders. But, if so, the empiricist must acknowledge that, if we take any presently accepted theory, then there must be alternatives, different theories (indefinitely many of them) which treat the evidence equally well-assuming that the only evidential criterion is the entailment of the correct observational results.
All the same, there is an easy general result as well: assuming that a theory is any deductively closed set of sentences, and assuming, with the empiricist that the language in which these sentences are expressed has two sorts of predicated (observational and theoretical), and, finally, assuming that the entailment of the evidence is only constraint on empirical adequacy, then there are always indefinitely many different theories which are equally empirically adequate in a language in which the two sets of predicates are differentiated. Consider the restrictions if ‘T’ were quantified-free sentences expressed purely in the observational vocabulary, then any conservative extension of that restricted set of T’s consequences back into the full vocabulary is a ‘theory’ co-empirically adequately with-entailing the same singular observational statements as ‘T’. Unless veery special conditions apply (conditions which do not apply to any actualization for which is to succumb to scientific theory), then some of the empirically equivalent theories will formally contradict ‘T’. (A similar straightforward demonstration works for the currently more fashionable account of theories as sets of models.)
How marked by complexity designate the basic fundamental part and parcel of the empiricist, who repudiates such as such to exclude the claim that two empirically equivalent theories are thereby fully equivalent, explain why the particular theory ‘T’ that is, as a matter of fact, accepted in sciences which are recognized submissions that seem referring of other possible theories as ‘T’, with which has the same observational content? Obviously the answer must be ‘by bringing in further criteria beyond that of simply having the right observational consequence. Simplicity, coherence with other accepted these and wholeness in the unity as favourable contenders. There are notorious problems in formulating ths criteria at all precisely: But suppose, for present purposes, that we have heretofore, strong enough intuitive grasps to operate usefully with them. What is the status of such further criteria?
The empiricist-instrumentalist position, newly adopted and sharply argued by van Fraassen, is that those further criteria are ‘pragmatic’-that is, involved essential reference to ourselves as ‘theory-users’. We happen to prefer, for our own purposes, since, coherent, unified theories-but this is only a reflection of our preference es. It would be a mistake to think of those features supplying extra reasons to believe in the truth (or, approximate truth) of the theory that has them. Van Fraassen’s account differs from some standard instrumentalist-empiricist account in recognizing the extra content of a theory (beyond its directly observational content) as genuinely declarative, as consisting of true-or-false assertions about the hidden structure of the world. His account accepts that the extra content can neither be eliminated as a result of defining theoretical notions in observational terms, nor be properly regarded as only apparently declarative but in fact as simply a codification schema. For van Fraassen, if a theory says, that there are electrons, then the theory should be taken as meaning to express in words, that which is said and without any positivist divide debasing reinterpretations of the meaning that might make ‘There are electrons’ mere shorthand for some complicated set of statements about tracks in obscure chambers or the like.
In the case of contradictory but empirically equivalent theories, such as the theory T1 that ‘there are electrons’ and the theory T2 that ‘all the observable phenomena as if there are electrons but there are not ‘t’s. Van Fraassen’s account entails that each has a truth-value, at most one of which is ‘true’, is that science must use to indicate requirements by immediate or future needs or purpose not to T2, but this need not mean that it is rational thinking that it is more likely to be true (or otherwise appropriately connected with nature). So far as belief in the theory is belief but T2. The only belief involved in the acceptance of a theory is belief in the theorist’s empirical adequacy. To accept the quantum theory, for example, entails believing that it ‘saves the phenomena’-all the (relevant) phenomena, but only the phenomena, theorists do ‘say more’ than can be checked empirically even in principle. What more they say may indeed be true, but acceptance of the theory does not involve belief in the truth of the ‘more’ that theorist say.
Preferences between theories that are empirically equivalent are accounted for, because acceptance involves more than belief: As well as this epistemic dimension, acceptance also has a pragmatic dimension. Simplicity, (relative) freedom from ads hoc assumptions, ‘unity’, and the like are genuine virtues that can supply good reasons to accept one theory than another, but they are pragmatic virtues, reflecting the way we happen to like to do science, rather than anything about the world. Simplicity to think that they do so: The rationality of science and of scientific practices can be in truth (or approximate truth) of accepted theories. Van Fraassen’s account conflicts with what many others see as very strong intuitions.
The most generally accepted account of this distinction is that a theory of justification is internalist if and only if it requires that all of the factors needed for a belief to be epistemologically justified for a given person to be cognitively accessible to that person, internal to his cognitive perceptive, and externalist, if it allow s that, at least some of the justifying factors need not be thus accessible, so that they can be external to the believer’s cognitive perspective, beyond his knowingness. However, epistemologists often use the distinction between internalist and externalist theories of epistemic explications.
The externalism/internalism distinction has been mainly applied to theories of epistemic justification. It has also been applied in a closely related way to accounts of knowledge and a rather different way to accounts of belief and thought content. The internalist requirement of cognitive accessibility can be interpreted in at least two ways: A strong version of internalism would require that the believer actually be aware of the justifying factors in order to be justified while a weaker version would require only that he be capable of becoming aware of them by focussing his attention appropriately. But without the need for any change of position, new information, and so forth. Though the phrase ‘cognitively accessible’ suggests the weak interpretation, therein intuitive motivation for intentionalism, that in spite of the fact that, the idea that epistemic justification requires that the believer actually have in his cognitive possession a reason for thinking that the belief is true, wherefore, it would require the strong interpretation.
Perhaps the clearest example of an internalist position would be a ‘foundationalist’ view according to which foundational beliefs pertain to immediately experienced states of mind other beliefs are justified by standing in cognitively accessible logical or inferential relations to such foundational beliefs. Such a view could count as either a strong or a weak version of internalism, depending on whether actual awareness of the justifying elements or only the capacity to become aware of them is required. Similarly, a ‘coherentist’ views that the truth of a proposition consists in its being a member of some suitably defined body of other propositions: A body is consistent, coherent, and possibly endowed with other virtues, provided these are not defined in terms of truth. If both the beliefs or other states with which a justification belief is required to cohere and the coherence relations themselves are reflectively accessible.
It should be carefully noticed that when internalism is construed in this way, it is neither necessary nor sufficient by itself for internalism that the justifying factors literally are internal mental states of the person in question. Not necessarily, because on at least some views, e.g., a direct realist view of perception, something other than a mental state of the believer can be cognitively accessible: Not sufficient, because there are views according to which at least some mental states need not be actual (a strong version) or even possible (weak versions) objects of objective awareness. Also, on this way of drawing the distinction, a hybrid view (like the ones already set), according to which some of the factors required for justification must be cognitively accessible while the requiring obligations of employment seem the lack of something essential, whereby the vital fundamental duty of the others need not and overall will not be, would count as an externalist view. Obviously too, a view that was externalist in relation to a strong version of internalism (by not requiring that the believer actually be aware of all justifying factors) could still be internalist in relation to a weak version (by requiring that he at least is capable of becoming aware of them).
The most prominent recent externalist views have been versions of ‘reliabilism’, whose main requirements for justification are roughly that the belief is produced in a way or via a process that make it objectively likely that the belief is true. What makes such a view externalist is the absence of any requirement that the person for whom the belief is justified have any sort of cognitive access to the relation of reliability in question. Lacking such access, such a person will usually have or likely to be true, but will, on such an account, nonetheless, be epistemologically justified in accepting it. Thus, such a view arguably marks a major break from the modern epistemological tradition, stemming from Descartes, which identifies epistemic justification with having a reason, perhaps even a conclusive reason, for thinking that the belief is true. An epistemological working within this tradition is likely to feel that the externalist, than offering a competing account on the same concept of epistemic justification with which the traditional epistemologist is concerned, has simply changed the subject.
Two general lines of argument are commonly advanced in favour of justificatory externalism. The first starts from the allegedly common-sensical premise that knowledge can be non-problematically ascribed to relativity unsophisticated adults, to young children and even to higher animals. It is then argued that such ascriptions would be untenable on the standard internalist accounts of epistemic justification (assuming that epistemic justification is a necessary condition for knowledge), since the beliefs and inferences involved in such accounts are too complicated and sophisticated to be plausibly ascribed to such subjects. Thus, only an externalist view can make sense of such common-sense ascriptions and this, on the presumption that common-sense is correct, constitutes a strong argument in favour of externalism. An internalist may respond by externalism. An internalist may respond by challenging the initial premise, arguing that such ascriptions of knowledge are exaggerated, while perhaps at the same time claiming that the cognitive situation of at least some of the subjects in question. Is less restricted than the argument claims? A quite different response would be to reject the assumption that epistemic justification is a necessary condition for knowledge, perhaps, by adopting an externalist account of knowledge, rather than justification, as those aforementioned.
The second general line of argument for externalism points out that internalist views have conspicuously failed to provide defensible, non-sceptical solutions to the classical problems of epistemology. In striking contrast, however, such problems are overall easily solvable on an externalist view. Thus, if we assume both that the various relevant forms of scepticism are false and that the failure of internalist views so far is likely to be remedied in the future, we have good reason to think that some externalist view is true. Obviously the cogency of this argument depends on the plausibility of the two assumptions just noted. An internalist can reply, first, that it is not obvious that internalist epistemology is doomed to failure, that the explanation for the present lack of success may be the extreme difficulty of the problems in question. Secondly, it can be argued that most of even all of the appeal of the assumption that the various forms of scepticism are false depends essentially on the intuitive conviction that we do have possession of our reasons in the grasp for thinking that the various beliefs questioned by the sceptic is true-a conviction that the proponent of this argument must have a course reject.
The main objection to externalism rests on the intuition that the basic requirement for epistemic justification is that the acceptances of the belief in question are rational or responsible in relation to the cognitive goal of truth, which seems to necessitate for which the believer actually be aware of a reason for thinking that the belief is true, or at the very least, that such a reason be available to him. Since the satisfaction of an externalist condition is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of such a cognitively accessible reason, it is nonetheless, argued, externalism is mistaken as an account of epistemic justification. This general point has been elaborated by appeal to two sorts of putative intuitive counter-examples to externalism. The first of these challenges is the prerequisite justification by appealing to examples of belief which seem intuitively to be justified, but for which the externalist conditions are not satisfied. The standard examples of this sort are cases where beliefs produced in some very non-standard way, e.g., by a Cartesian demon, but nonetheless, in such a way that the subjective experience of the believer is indistinguishable on that of someone whose beliefs are produced more normally. Cases of this general sort can be constructed in which any of the standard externalist condition, e.g., that the belief is a result of a reliable process, fail to be satisfied. The intuitive claim is that the believer in such a case is nonetheless, epistemically justified, inasmuch as one whose belief is produced in a more normal way, and hence that externalist accounts of justification must be mistaken.
Perhaps the most interesting reply to this sort of counter-example, on behalf of reliabilism specifically, holds that reliability of a cognitive process is to be assessed in ‘normal’ possible worlds, i.e., in possible worlds that are actually the way our world is common-scenically believed to be, rather than in the world which actually contains the belief being judged. Since the cognitive processes employed in the Cartesian demon case are, we may assume, reliable when assessed in this way, the reliabilist can agree that such beliefs are justified. The obvious further issue is whether or not there is an adequate rationale for this construal of reliabilism, so that the reply is not merely ad hoc.
The second, correlative way of elaborating the general objection to justificatory externalism challenges the sufficiency of the various externalist conditions by citing cases where those conditions are satisfied, but where the believers in question seem intuitively not to be justified. Here the most widely discussed examples have to do with possible occult cognitive capacities like clairvoyance. Considering the point in application once again to reliabilism specifically, the claim is that a reliable clairvoyant who has no reason to think that he has such a cognitive power, and perhaps even good reasons to the contrary, is not rational or responsible and hence, not epistemologically justified in accepting the belief that result from his clairvoyance, despite the fact that the reliabilist condition is satisfied.
One sort of response to this latter sort of remonstrance is to ‘bite the bullet’ and insist that such believer e in fact justified, dismissing the seeming intuitions to the contrary as latent internalist prejudice. To a greater extent the more widely adopted response attempts to impose additional conditions, usually of a greater or less internalist sort, which will rule out the offending example while still stopping far short of a full internalist. But while there is little doubt that such modified versions of externalism can indeed handle particular case’s well enough to avoid clear intuitive implausibility, the issue is whether there will always be equally problematic cases for issues that might not handle, and whether there is any clear motivation for the additional requirements other than the general internalist view of justification that externalists are committed to reject.
A view in this same general vein, one that might be described as a hybrid of internalism and externalism, holding that epistemic justification requires that there be a justificatory factor that is cognitively accessible e to the believer in question (though it need not be actually grasped), thus ruling out, e.g., a pure reliabilism. at the same time, however, though it must be objectively true that beliefs for which such a factor is available are likely to be true, this further fact need not be in any way grasped or cognitively accessible to the believer. In effect, of the two premises needed to argue that a particular belief is likely to be true, one must be accessible in a way that would satisfy at least weak internalism, while the second can be (and will normally be) purely external. Here the internalist will respond that this hybrid view is of no help at all in meeting the objection that the belief is not held in the rational responsible way that justification intuitively seems required, for the believer in question, lacking one crucial premise, still has no reason at all for thinking that his belief is likely to be true.
An alternative to giving an externalist account of epistemic justification, one which may be more defensible while still accommodating many of the same motivating concerns, is to give an externalist account of knowledge directly, without relying on an intermediate account of justification. Such a view obviously has to reject the justified true belief account of knowledge, holding instead that knowledge is true belief which satisfies the chosen externalist condition, e.g., is a result of a reliable process (and, perhaps, further conditions as well). This makes it possible for such a view to retain an internalist account of epistemic justification, though the centrality of that concept is epistemology would obviously be seriously diminished.
Such an externalist account of knowledge can accommodate the common-sen conviction that animals, young children and unsophisticated adults’ posse’s cognition, in that knowledge, though not the weaker conviction (if such a conviction even exists) that such individuals are epistemically justified in their belief. It is also, least of mention, less vulnerable to internalist counter-examples of the sort and since the intuitivistic vortices in the pertaining extent in the clarification, that is to clear up justification than to knowledge. What is uncertain, is what ultimate philosophical significance the resulting conception of knowledge is taken for granted as of having, but being the occupant of having any serious bearing on traditional epistemological problems and on the deepest and most troubling versions of scepticism, which seem in fact to be primarily concerned with justification rather than knowledge?
A rather different use of the terms ‘internalism’ and ‘externalism’ have to do with the issue of how the content of beliefs and thoughts is determined: According to an internalist view of content, the content of such intentional states depends only on the non-relational, internal properties of the individual’s mind or brain, and not at all on his physical and social environment: While according to an externalist view, content is significantly affected by such external factors. Here to a view that appeals to both internal and external elements are standardly classified as an externalist view.
As with justification and knowledge, the traditional view of content has been strongly internalist character. The main argument for externalism derives from the philosophy of language, more specifically from the various phenomena pertaining to natural kind terms, indexical, and so forth, that motivates the views that have come to be known as ‘direct reference’ theories. Such phenomena seem at least to show that the belief or thought content that can e properly attributed to a person is dependent on facts about his environment -, e.g., whether he is on Earth or Twin Earth, what in fact he is pointing at, the classificatory criteria employed by the experts in his social group, etc.-not just on what is going on internally in his mind or brain.
An objection to externalist accounts of content is that they seem unable to do justice to our ability to know the contents of our beliefs or thoughts ‘from the inside’, simply by reflection. If content is dependent of external factors pertaining to the environment, then knowledge of content should depend on knowledge of this factors-which will not usually be available to the person whose belief or thought is in question.
The adoption of an externalist account of mental content would seem to support an externalist account of justification in the following way: If part of all of the content of a belief inaccessible to the believer, then both the justifying status of other beliefs in relation to the content and the status of that content as justifying further beliefs will be similarly inaccessible, thus contravening the internalist must insist that there are no rustication relations of these sorts, that only internally accessible content can either be justified or justify anything else: By such a response appears lame unless it is coupled with an attempt to shows that the externalists account of content is mistaken.
To have a word or a picture, or any other object in one’s mind seems to be one thing, but to understand it is quite another. A major target of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is the suggestion that this understanding is achieved by a further presence, so that words might be understood if they are accompanied by ideas, for example. Wittgenstein insists that the extra presence merely raise the same kind of problem again. The better of suggestions in that understanding is to be thought of as possession of a technique, or skill, and this is the point of the slogan that ‘meaning is use’, the idea is congenital to ‘pragmatism’ and hostile to ineffable and incommunicable understandings.
Whatever it is that makes, what would otherwise be mere sounds and inscriptions into instruments of communication and understanding. The philosophical problem is to demystify this power, and to relate it to what we know of ourselves and the world. Contributions to this study include the theory of speech acts and the investigation of commonisation and the relationship between words and ideas, sand words and the world.
The most influential idea in the theory of meaning in the past hundred years is the thesis that the meaning of an indicative sentence is given by its truth-condition. On this conception, to understand a sentence is to know its truth-conditions. The conception was first clearly formulated by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics Gottlob Frége (1848-1925), then was developed in a distinctive way by the early Wittgenstein, and is as leading idea of the American philosopher Donald Herbert Davidson. (1917-2003). The conception has remained so central that those who offer opposing theories characteristically define their position by reference to it.
The conception of meaning as truth-conditions needs not and should not be advanced for being in itself a complete account of meaning. For instance, one who understands a language must have some idea of the range of speech acts conventionally performed by the various types of sentences in the language, and must have some ideate significance of speech acts, the claim of the theorist of truth-conditions should rather be targeted on the notion of content: If two indicative sentences differ in what they strictly and literally say, then this difference is fully accounted for by the difference in their truth-conditions. It is this claim and its attendant problems, which will be the concern of each in the following.
The meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning of its constituents. This is indeed just a statement of what it is for an expression to be semantically complex. It is one of the initial attractions of the conception of meaning as truth-conditions that it permits a smooth and satisfying account of the ay in which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meaning its constituents. On the truth-conditional conception, to give the meaning of sn expressions is the contribution it makes to the truth-conditions of sentences in which it occurs. For example terms-proper names, indexical, and certain pronouns-this is done by stating the reference of the term in question. For predicates, it is done either by stating the conditions under which the predicate is true of arbitrary objects, or by stating the conditions under which arbitrary atomic sentences containing it true. The meaning of a sentence-forming operator as given by stating its contribution to the truth-conditions of a complex sentence, as function of the semantic values of the sentence on which it operates. For an extremely simple, but nevertheless structured language, can state that contribution’s various expressions make to truth condition, are such as:
A1: The referent of ‘London ‘ is London.
A2: The referent of ‘Paris’ is Paris
A3: Any sentence of the form ‘a is beautiful’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘a’ is beautiful.
A4: Any sentence of the form ‘a is larger than b’ is true if and only if the referent of ‘a’ is larger than a referent of ‘b’.
A5: Any sentence of t he for m ‘its no t the case that ‘A’ is true if and only if it is not the case that ‘A’ is true.
A6: Any sentence of the form ‘A and B’ is true if and only if ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true.
The principle’s A1-A6 construct and develop a form for which a simple theory of truth for a fragment of English. In this, the or it is possible to derive these consequences: That ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true if and only if Paris is beautiful, is true and only if Paris is beautiful (from A2 and A3): That ‘London is larger than Paris and it is not the case that London is beautiful, is true if and only if London is larger than Paris and it is not the case that London is beautiful (from A1-A5), and in general, for any sentence ‘A’, this simple language we can derive something of the form ‘A’ is true if and only if ‘A’.
Yet, theorists of truth conditions should insist that not every true statement about the reference o f an expression is fit to be an axiom in a meaning-giving theory of truth for a language. The axiom
‘London’ refers to the ct in which there was a huge fire in 1666.
This is a true statement about the reference of ‘London’. It is a consequence of a hypotheses which substitute the axiom for A1 in our simple truth theory that ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if the city in which there was a huge fire in 1666 is beautiful. Since a subject can align himself with the naming authenticity that ‘London’ is without knowing that the last-mentioned truth condition, this replacement axiom is not fit to be an axiom in a meaning-specifying truth theory. It is, of course, incumbent on a theorist of meaning as truth conditions to state the constraints on the acceptability of axioms in a way which does not presuppose any prior, truth-conditional conception of meaning.
Among the many challenges facing the theorist of truth conditions, two are particularly salient and fundamental, first, the theorist has to answer the charge of triviality or vacuity. Second, the theorist must offer an account of which for a person’s language is truly describable by a semantic theory containing a given semantic axiom.
What can take the charge of triviality first? In more detail, it would run thus: Since the content of the claim that the judgment of conviction ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true amounts to no more than the claim that Paris is beautiful, we can trivially describe understanding a sentence, if we wish, as knowing its truth-conditions. But this gives us no substantive account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than a grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge tests upon what have been called the ‘redundancy theory of truth’, the theory also known as ‘minimalism’. Or the ‘deflationary’ view of truth, fathered by the German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics, had begun with Gottlob Frége (1848-1925), and the Cambridge mathematician and philosopher Plumton Frank Ramsey (1903-30). Wherefore, the essential claim is that the predicate’ . . . is true’ does not have a sense, i.e., expresses no substantive or profound or explanatory concept that ought to be the topic of philosophical enquiry. The approach admits of different versions, nit centres on the points that ‘it is true that p’ says no more nor less than ‘p’(hence redundancy): That in less direct context, such as ‘everything he said was true’. Or ‘all logical consequences are true’. The predicate functions as a device enabling us to generalize rather than as an adjective or predicate describing the things he said or the kinds of propositions that follow from true propositions. For example: ‘(∀p, q)(p & p ➞ q ➞ q)’ where there is no use of a notion of truth.
There are technical problems in interpreting all uses of the notion of truth in such ways, but they are not generally felt to be insurmountable. The approach needs to explain away apparently substantive users of the notion, such as ‘science aims at the truth’ or ‘truth is a normative governing discourse’. Indeed, postmodernist writing frequently advocates that we must abandon such norms, along with a discredited ‘objectivity’ conception of truth. But, perhaps, we can have the norm even when objectivity is problematic, since they can be framed without mention of truth: Science wants it to be so that whenever science holds that ‘p’, then ‘p’, discourse is to be regulated by the principle that it is wrong to assert ‘p’ when ‘not-p’.
It is, nonetheless, that we can take charge of triviality, since the content of a claim that the sensitivity of the judgment of conviction ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true, amounting to no more than the claim that Paris is beautifully, we can trivially describe understanding a sentence. If we wish, as knowing its truth-condition, but this gives us no substitute account of understanding whatsoever. Something other than grasp of truth conditions must provide the substantive account. The charge rests on or upon what has been the redundancy theory of truth. The minimal theory states that the concept of truth is exhaustively by the fact that it conforms to the equivalence principle, the principle that for any proposition ‘p’, it is true that ‘p’ if and only if ‘p’. Many different philosophical theories, accept that e equivalence principle, are distinguishing features of the minimal theory, its claim that the equivalence principle exhausts the notion of truth. It is, however, widely accepted, both by opponents and supporters of truth conditional theories of meaning, that it is inconsistent to accept both the minimal theory of truth and a truth conditional account of meaning. If the claim that the sentence ‘Paris is beautiful, it is circular to try to explain the sentence’s meaning in terms of its truth condition. The minimal theory of truth has been endorsed by Ramsey, Ayer, and later Wittgenstein, Quine, Strawson, Horwich and-confusingly and inconsistently of Frége himself.
The minimal theory treats instances of the equivalence principle as definitional truth for a given sentence. But in fact, it seems that each instance of the equivalence principle can itself be explained. The truths from which such an instance as
‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if
London is beautiful,
Can be explained are precisely A1 and A3 in that, this would be a pseudo-explanation if the fact that ‘London’ refers to London consists in part in the fact that ‘London is beautiful’ has the truth-condition it does? But that is very implausible: It is, after all, possible to understand and refer to by the name that of ‘London’ without understanding the predicate ‘is beautiful’. The idea that facts about the reference of particular words can be explanatory of facts about the truth conditions of sentences containing them in no way requires any naturalistic or any other kind of reduction of the notion of reference. Nor is the idea incompatible with the plausible point that singular reference can be attributed at all only to something which is capable of combining with other expressions to form complete sentences. That still leaves room for facts about an expression’s having the particular reference it does to be partially explanatory of the particular truth condition possessed by a given sentence containing it. The minimal theory thus treats as definitional or stimulative something which is in fact open to explanation. What makes this explanation possible is that there is a general notion of truth which has, among the many links which hold it in place, systematic connections with the semantic values of subsentential expressions.
A second problem with the minimal theory is that it seems impossible to formulate it without at some point relying implicitly on features and principles involving truths which go beyond anything countenanced by the minimal theory. If, minimal, or redundancy theory treats true statements as predicated of anything linguistic, like its utterances, or even, the type-in-a-language, or whatever. Then the equivalence schemata will not cover all cases, but those in the theorist’s own language only. Some account has to be given of truth for sentences of other languages. Speaking of the truth of language-independent propositions or thoughts will only postpone, not avoid, this issue, since at some point principles have to be stated associating these language-dependent entities with sentences of particular languages. The defender of the minimalist theory is that the sentence ‘S’ of a foreign language is best translated by our sentence, then the foreign sentence ‘S’ is true if and only if ‘p’. Now the best translation of a sentence must preserve the concepts expressed in the sentence. Constraints involving a general notion of truth are pervasive plausible philosophical theory of concepts. It is, for example, a condition of adequacy on an individuating account statement of any concept that there exists what may be called ‘Determination Theory’ for that account-that is, a specification on how the account contributes to fixing the semantic value of that concept. The notion of a concept’s semantic value is the notion of something which makes a certain contribution to the truth conditions of thoughts in which the concept occurs. But this is to presuppose, than to elucidate, a general notion of truth.
It is, also, plausible that there are general constraints on the form of such Determination Theories, constrains which to involve truth, and which are not derivable from the minimalist‘s creation. Suppose that concepts are individuated by their possession condition. A possession condition may in various ways make a thinker’s possession of a particular concept dependent upon his relation to his environment. Many possession conditions will mention the links between accept and the thinker’s perceptual experience. Perceptual experience represents the world for being a certain way. It is arguable that the only satisfactory explanation to what it is for perceptual experience to represent the world in a particular way must refer to the complex relations of the experience to the subject’s environment. If this is so, to mention of such experiences in a possession condition dependent in part upon the environmental relations of the thinker. Evan though the thinker’s non-environmental properties and relations remain constant, the conceptual content of his mental state can vary in the thinker’s social environment is varied. A possession condition which properly individuates such a concept must take into account the thinker’s social relations, in particular his linguistic relations.
Its alternative approach, addresses the question by starting from the idea that a concept is individuated by the condition which must be satisfied a thinker is to posses that concept and to be capable of having beliefs and other altitudes whose contents contain it as a constituent. So, to take a simple case, one could propose that the logical concept ‘and’ is individualized by this condition: It is the unique concept ‘C’ to posses which a thinker has to find these forms of inference compelling, without basting them on any further inference or information: From any two premises ‘A’ and ‘B’, ACB can be inferred and from any premises a relatively observational concepts such as grounding possibilities can be individuated in part by stating that the thinker finds specified contents containing it compelling when he has certain kinds of perception, and in part by relating those judgements containing the concept and which are not based on perception to those judgements that are. A statement which individuates a concept by saying what is required for a thinker to posses it can be described as giving the possession condition for the concept.
A possession condition for a particular concept may actually make use of that concept. The possession condition for ‘and’ doers not. we can also expect to use relatively observational concepts in specifying the kind of experience which have to be mentioned in the possession conditions for relatively observational concepts. What we must avoid is mention of the concept in question as such within the content of the attitude attributed to the thinker in the possession condition. Otherwise we would be presupposed possession of the concept in an account which was meant to elucidate its possession. In talking of what the thinker finds compelling, the possession conditions can also respect an insight of the later Wittgenstein: That a thinker’s mastery of a concept is inextricably tied to how he finds it natural to go in new cases in applying the concept.
Sometimes a family of concepts has this property: It is not possible to master any one of the members of the family without mastering of the others. Two of the families which plausibly have this status are these: The family consisting of same simple concepts 0, 1. 2, . . . of the natural numbers and the corresponding concepts of numerical quantifiers, ‘there are o so-and-so’s, there is 1 so-and-so, . . . and the family consisting of the concepts ‘belief’ and ‘desire’. Such families have come to be known as ‘local Holist’s’. A local holism does not prevent the individuation of a concept by its possession condition. Rather, it demands that all the concepts in the family be individuated simultaneously. So one would say something of this conduct regulated by an external control as a custom or a formal protocol of procedures, such that the economy is delegated by some outward appearance of something as distinguished from the substance of which it is made form. Belief and desire form the unique pair of concepts C1 and C2, such that for a thinker to posses them is to meet such-and-such condition involving the thinker, C1 and C2. For those other possession conditions to individuate properly. It is necessary that there be some ranking of the concepts treated. The possession condition or concepts higher in the ranking must presuppose only possession of concepts at the same or lower levels in the ranking.
A possession condition may in various ways make a thinker’s possession of a particular concept dependent on or upon his relations to his environment. Many possession conditions will mention the links between a concept and the thinker’s perceptual experience. Perceptual experience represents the world for being a certain way. It is arguable that the only satisfactory explanation of what it is for perceptual experience to represent the world in a particular way must refer to the complex relations of the experience to te subject’s environment. If this is so, then mention of such experiences in a possession condition will make possession f that concept relations tn the thicker. Burge (1979) has also argued from intuitions about particular examples that even though the thinker’s non-environmental properties and relations remain constant, the conceptual content of his mental state can vary in the thinker’s social environment is varied. A possession condition which properly individuates such a concept must take into account the thinker’s social relations, in particular his linguistic relations.
Once, again, some general principles involving truth can, as Horwich has emphasized, be derived from the equivalence schemata using minimal logical apparatus. Consider, for instance, the principle that ‘Paris is beautiful and London is beautiful’ is true if and only if ‘Paris is beautiful’ is true and ‘London is beautiful’ is true if and only if Paris is beautiful and London is beautiful. But no logical manipulations of the equivalence e schemata will allow the derivation of that general constraint governing possession condition, truth and assignment of semantic values. That constraints can, of course, be regarded as a further elaboration of the idea that truth is one of the aims of judgement.
What is to a greater extent, but to consider the other question, for ‘What is it for a person’s language to be correctly describable by a semantic theory containing a particular axiom, such as the above axiom A6 for conjunctions? This question may be addressed at two depths of generality. A shallower of levels, in this question may take for granted the person’s possession of the concept of conjunction, and be concerned with what hast be true for the axiom to describe his language correctly. At a deeper level, an answer should not sidestep the issue of what it is to posses the concept. The answers to both questions are of great interest.
When a person means conjunction by ‘and’, he is not necessarily capable of phrasing the A6 axiom. Even if he can formulate it, his ability to formulate it is not causal basis of his capacity to hear sentences containing the word ‘and’ as meaning something involving conjunction. Nor is it the causal basis of his capacity to mean something involving conjunction by sentences he utters containing the word ‘and’. Is it then right to regard a truth theory as part of an unconscious psychological computation, and to regard understanding a sentence as involving a particular way of deriving a theorem from a truth theory at some level of unconscious processing? One problem with this is that it is quite implausible that everyone who speaks the same language has to use the same algorithms for computing the meaning of a sentence. In the past thirteen years, the particular yet peculiar work as befitting Davies and Evans, whereby a conception has evolved according to an axiom like A6, is true of a person’s component in the explanation of his understanding of each sentence containing the words ‘and’, a common component which explains why each such sentence is understood as meaning something involving conjunction. This conception can also be elaborated in computational; terms: As alike to the axiom A6 to be true of a person’s language is for the unconscious mechanism, which produce understanding to draw on the information that a sentence of the form ‘A and B’ is true only if ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true. Many different algorithms may equally draw on or open this information. The psychological reality of a semantic theory thus are to involve, Marr’s (1982) given by classification as something intermediate between his level one, the function computed, and his level two, the algorithm by which it is computed. This conception of the psychological reality of a semantic theory can also be applied to syntactic and phonological theories. Theories in semantics, syntax and phonology are not ordinary of themselves but require to specify the particular algorithm which the language user employs. The identification of the particular computational methods employed is a task for psychology. But semantic, syntactic and phonological theories are answerable to psychological data, and are potentially refutable by them-for these linguistic theories do make commitments to the information drawn on or upon by mechanisms in the language user.
This answer to the question of what it is for an axiom to be true of a person’s language clearly takes for granted the person’s possession of the concept expressed by the word treated by the axiom. In the example of the A6 axiom, the information drawn upon is that sentence of the form ‘A and B’ are true if and only if ‘A’ is true and ‘B’ is true. This informational content employs, as it has to if it is to be adequate, the concept of conjunction used in stating the meaning of sentences containing ‘and’. ‘S’ be that of a computational answer we have returned needs further elaboration, which does not want to take for granted possession of the concepts expressed in the language. It is at this point that the theory of linguistic understanding has to argue that it has to draw upon a theory if the conditions for possessing a given concept. It is plausible that the concept of conjunction is individuated by the following condition for a thinker to have possession of it:
The concept ‘and’ is that concept ‘C’ to possess which a
thinker must meet the following conditions: He finds inferences
of the following forms compelling, does not find them
looking down on the aftermath of any reasoning and finds them
because they are of their form:
pCq pCq pq
p q pCq
Here ‘p’ and ‘q’ range ov complete propositional thoughts, not sentences. When A6 axiom is true of a person’s language, there is a global dovetailing between this possessional condition for the concept of conjunction and certain of his practices involving the word ‘and’. For the case of conjunction, the dovetailing involves at least this:
If the possession condition for conjuncture entails that the
thinker who possesses the concept of conjunction must be
willing to make certain transitions involving the thought p&q,
and of the thinker’s semitrance ‘A’ means that ‘p’ and his
sentence ‘B’ means that ‘q’ then: The thinker must be willing
to make the corresponding linguistic transition involving
sentence ‘A and B’.
This is only part of what is involved in the required dovetailing. Given what we have already said about the uniform explanation of the understanding of the various occurrences of a given word, we should also add, that there is a uniform (unconscious, computational) explanation of the language user’s willingness to make the corresponding transitions involving the sentence ‘A and B’.
This dovetailing account returns an answer to the deeper questions because neither the possession condition for conjunction, nor the dovetailing condition which builds upon the dovetailing condition which builds on or upon that possession condition, takes for granted the thinker’s possession of the concept expressed by ‘and’. The dovetailing account for conjunction is an exampling of a greater amount of an overall schemata, which can be applied to any concept. The case of conjunction is of course, exceptionally simple in several respects. Possession conditions for other concepts will speak not just of inferential transitions, but of certain conditions in which beliefs involving the concept in question are accepted or rejected, and the corresponding dovetailing condition will inherit these features. This dovetailing account has also to be underpinned by a general rationale linking contributions to truth conditions with the particular possession condition proposed for concepts. It is part of the task of the theory of concepts to supply this in developing Determination Theories for particular concepts.
In some cases, a relatively clear account is possible of how a concept can feature in thoughts which may be true though unverifiable. The possession condition for the quantificational concept all natural numbers can in outline run thus: This quantifier is that concept Cx . . . x . . . to posses which the thinker has to find any inference of the form:
CxFx
Fn.
Compelling, where ‘n’ is a concept of a natural number, and does not have to find anything else essentially containing Cx . . . x . . . compelling. The straightforward Determination Theory for this possession condition is one on which the truth of such a thought CxFx is true only if all natural numbers are ‘F’. That all natural numbers are ‘F’ is a condition which can hold without our being able to establish that it holds. So an axiom of a truth theory which dovetails with this possession condition for universal quantification over the natural numbers will be b component of a realistic, non-verifications theory of truth conditions.
Finally, this response to the deeper questions allows us to answer two challenges to the conception of meaning as truth-conditions. First, there was the question left hanging earlier, of how the theorist of truth-conditions is to say what makes one axiom of a semantic theory correct rather than another, when the two axioms assigned the same semantic values, but do so by different concepts. Since the different concepts will have different possession conditions, the dovetailing accounts, at the deeper level, of what it is for each axiom to be correct for a person’s language will be different accounts. Second, there is a challenge repeatedly made by the minimalist theories of truth, to the effect that the theorist of meaning as truth-conditions should give some non-circular account of what it is to understand a sentence, or to be capable of understanding all sentences containing a given constituent. For each expression in a sentence, the corresponding dovetailing account, together with the possession condition, supplies a non-circular account of what it is to that expression. The combined accounts for each of the expressions which comprise a given sentence together constitute a non-circular account of what it is to understand the complete sentence. Taken together, they allow theorists of meaning as truth-conditions fully to meet the challenge.
A widely discussed idea is that for a psychological subject to be in a certain set of content-involving states, for attribution of those state s to make the subject as rationally intelligible. Perceptions make it rational for a person to form corresponding beliefs. Beliefs make it rational to draw certain inferences such as belief and desire that to a condition or occurrence, traceable to a cause as effectually generated by a protocol that of being something by leaning toward form, shaping, combining to assemble for some agreeable reason for which the formations of particular intentions, and performance are those of the appropriate actions. People are frequently irrational of course, bu t a governing ideal of this approach is that for any family of contents, there is some minimal core of rational transitions to or from states involving themselves, a core that a person must respect of his states is to be attribute d with those contents at all. we contrast in what we want do with what we must do-whether for reasons of morality or duty, or even for reasons of practical necessity (to get what we wanted in the first place). Accordingly, our own desires have seemed to be the principal actions that most fully express our own individual natures and will, and those for which we are personally responsible. But desire has also seemed to be a principle of action contrary to and at war with our better natures, as rational and agents. For it is principally from our own differing perspectives upon what would be good, that each of us wants what he does, each point of view being defined by one’s own interests and pleasure. In this, the representations of desire are like those of sensory perception, similarly shaped by the perspective of the perceiver and the idiosyncrasies of the perceptual dialectic about desire and its object recapitulates that of perception ad sensible qualities. The strength of desire, for instance, varies with the state of the subject more or less independently of the character, an the actual utility, of the object wanted. Such facts cast doubt on the ‘objectivity’ of desire, and on the existence of correlatives property of ‘goodness’, inherent in the objects of our desires, and independent of them. Perhaps, as the Dutch Jewish rationalist (1632-77) Benedictus de Spinoza put it, it is not that we want what we think good, but that we think well what we happen to want-the ‘good’ in what we want being a mere shadow cast by the desire for it. (There is a parallel Protagorean view of belief, similarly sceptical of truth). The serious defence of such a view, however, would require a systematic reduction of apparent facts about goodness to fats about desire, and an analysis of desire which in turn makes no reference to goodness. While what is yet to be provided, moral psychologists have sought to vindicate an idea of objective goodness. For example, as what would be good from all points of view, or none, or, in the manner of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, to set up another principle (the will or practical reason) conceived as an autonomous informant of action, independent of desire or its object: And this tradition has tended to minimize the role of desire in the genesis of action.
Ascribing states with content on actual person has to proceed simultaneously with attributions of as wide range of non-rational states and capacities. In general, we cannot understand a persons reasons for acting as he does without knowing the array of emotions and sensations to which he is subject: What he remembers and what he forgets, and how he reasons beyond the confines of minimal rationality. Even the content-involving perceptual states, which play a fundamental role in individuating content, cannot be understood purely in terms relating to minimal rationality. A perception of the world as being a certain way is not (and could not be) under a subject’s rational control. Thought it is true and important that perceptions give reason for forming beliefs, the beliefs for which they fundamentally provide reasons-observational belies about the environment-have contents which can only be elucidated by referring to perceptual experience. In this respect (as in others), perceptual states differ from beliefs and desires that are individuated by mentioning what they provide reasons for judging or doing: or frequently these latter judgements and actions can be individuated without reference back to the states that provide for them.
What is the significance for theories of content of the fact that it is almost certainly adaptive for members of as species to have a system of states with representational contents which are capable of influencing their actions appropriately? According to teleological theories a content, a constitutive account of content-one which says what it is for a state to have a given content-must make user of the notion of natural function and teleology. The intuitive idea is that for a belief state to have a given content ‘p’ is for the belief-forming mechanisms which produced it to have the unction as, perhaps, derivatively of producing that stare only when it is the case that ‘p’. One issue this approach must tackle is whether it is really capable of associating with states the classical, realistic, verification-transcendent contents which, pre-theoretically, we attribute to them. It is not clear that a content’s holding unknowably can influence the replication of belief-forming mechanisms. But if content itself proves to resist elucidation, it is still a very natural function and selection. It is still a very attractive view that selection, it is still a very attractive view, that selection must be mentioned in an account of what associates something-such as aa sentence-wi a particular content, even though that content itself may be individuated by other means.
Contents, are most notably given by some consequence or prominence in some sorted agreement to which makes them explicitly distinctive by rule in specifying ‘that . . .’ clauses, and it is natural to suppose that a content has the same kind of sequence and hierarchical structure as the sentence that specifies it. This supposition would be widely accepted for conceptual content. It is, however, a substantive thesis that all content is conceptual. One way of treating one sort of ‘perceptual content’ is to regard the content as determined by a spatial type, the type under which the region of space around the perceiver must fall if the experience with that content is to represent the environment correctly. The type involves a specification of surfaces and features in the environment, and their distances and directions from the perceiver’s body as origin, such contents lack any sentence-like structure at all. Supporters of the view that all content is conceptual will argue that the legitimacy of using these spatial types in giving the content of experience does not undermine the thesis that all content is conceptual. Such supporters will say that the spatial type is just a way of capturing what can equally be captured by conceptual components such as ‘that distance’, or ‘that direction’, where these demonstratives are made available by the perception in question. Friends of conceptual content will respond that these demonstratives themselves cannot be elucidated without mentioning the spatial type which lack sentence-like structure.
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